UAIIVERSm   OF 
DAVIS 


[See  p.  93 


HOUSES    OF    PARLIAMENT 


LONDON     FILMS 


BY    W.    D.    HOWELLS 


ILLUSTRATED 


HARPER    &    BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

1905 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
DAVIS 


Copyright,  1905,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 

All  rights  reserved. 
Published  October,  1905. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAOB 

I.  METEOROLOGICAL  EMOTIONS 1 

II.  Civic  AND  SOCIAL  COMPARISONS,  MOSTLY  ODIOUS  10 

III.  SHOWS  AND  SIDE-SHOWS  OF  STATE 22 

IV.  THE  DUN  YEAR'S  BRILLIANT  FLOWER  ....  35 
V.  THE  SIGHTS  AND  SOUNDS  OP  THE  STREETS   .     .  47 

VI.  SOME  MISGIVINGS  AS  TO  THE  AMERICAN  INVASION  56 

VII.  IN  THE  GALLERY  OF  THE  COMMONS 68 

VIII.  THE  MEANS  OF  SOJOURN 74 

IX.  CERTAIN  TRAITS  OF  THE  LONDON  SPRINGTIME     .  82 
X.  SOME    VOLUNTARY    AND    INVOLUNTARY    SIGHT 
SEEING     .     y 88 

XL  GLIMPSES  OF  THE  LOWLY  AND  THE  LOWLIER     .  100 

XII.  TWICE-SEEN  SIGHTS  AND  HALF-FANCIED  FACTS  118 

XIII.  AN  AFTERNOON  AT  HAMPTON  COURT    ....  137 

XIV.  A  SUNDAY  MORNING  IN  THE  COUNTRY  .         .     .  150 
XV.  FISHING  FOR  WHITEBAIT 159 

XVI.  HENLEY  DAY 165 

XVII.  AMERICAN  ORIGINS — MOSTLY  NORTHERN    .     .    .  178 

XVIII.  AMERICAN  ORIGINS — MOSTLY  SOUTHERN    .    .     .  203 

XIX.  ASPECTS  AND  INTIMATIONS 222 

XX.  PARTING  GUESTS  232 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


HOUSES  OF  PARLIAMENT Frontispiece 

FLEET  STREET  AND  ST.  DUNSTAN'S  CHURCH Facing  p.    12 

THE   CARRIAGES   DRAWN   UP  BESIDE   THE   SACRED   CLOSE  .  "  18 

SUNDAY   AFTERNOON,    HYDE    PARK "  24 

ROTTEN   ROW "  38 

A   BLOCK   IN    THE    STRAND "  48 

ST.    PAUL'S    CATHEDRAL "  80 

WESTMINSTER   ABBEY "  86 

THE    HORSE    GUARDS,    WHITEHALL "  98 

WESTMINSTER    BRIDGE   AND   CLOCK  TOWER "  160 

A   HOUSE-BOAT   ON   THE   THAMES   AT   HENLEY      ....  "  168 

THE   CROWD    OF    SIGHT-SEERS   AT   HENLEY "  174 

THE   TOWER    OF   LONDON "  184 

ST.  OLAVE'S,  TOOLEY  STREET .  "  186 

LONDON  BRIDGE "  188 

THE  ANCIENT  CHURCH  OF  ST.  MAGNUS "  190 

THE  EAST  INDIA  HOUSE  OF  CHARLES  LAMB'S  TIME    .    .  "  192 

CHURCH  OF  THE  DUTCH  REFUGEES "  194 

BOW-BELLS  (ST.  MARY-LE-BOW,  CHEAPSIDE) "  196 

STAPLE  INN,  HOLBORN "  214 

CLIFFORD'S  INN  HALL "  216 

ANCIENT  CHURCH  OF  ST.  MARTINS-IN-THE-FIELDS  ...  "  218 

HYDE  PARK  IN  OCTOBER "  222 

THAMES  EMBANKMENT "  226 


LONDON   FILMS 


LONDON   FILMS 


METEOROLOGICAL  EMOTIONS 

WHOEVER  carries  a  mental  kodak  with  him  (as 
I  suspect  I  was  in  the  habit  of  doing  long  before 
I  knew  it)  must  be  aware  of  the  uncertain  value  of  the 
different  exposures.  This  can  be  determined  only  by 
the  process  of  developing,  which  requires  a  dark  room 
and  other  apparatus  not  always  at  hand;  and  so  much 
depends  upon  the  process  that  it  might  be  well  if  it 
could  always  be  left  to  some  one  who  makes  a  specialty 
of  it,  as  in  the  case  of  the  real  amateur  photographer. 
Then  one's  faulty  impressions  might  be  so  treated  as  to 
yield  a  pictorial  result  of  interest,  or  frankly  thrown 
away  if  they  showed  hopeless  to  the  instructed  eye. 
Otherwise,  one  must  do  one's  own  developing,  and  trust 
the  result,  whatever  it  is,  to  the  imaginative  kindness 
of  the  reader,  who  will  surely,  if  he  is  the  right  sort  of 
reader,  be  able  to  sharpen  the  blurred  details,  to  soften 
the  harsh  lights,  and  blend  the  shadows  in  a  subordi 
nation  giving  due  relief  to  the  best  meaning  of  the  print. 
This  is  what  I  fancy  myself  to  be  doing  now,  and  if  any 
one  shall  say  that  my  little  pictures  are  superficial,  I 
shall  not  be  able  to  gainsay  him.  I  can  only  answer 

l 


LONDON  FILMS 

that  most  pictures  represent  the  surfaces  of  things;  but 
at  the  same  time  I  can  fully  share  the  disappointment  of 
those  who  would  prefer  some  such  result  as  the  em 
ployment  of  the  Roentgen  rays  would  have  given,  if 
applied  to  certain  aspects  of  the  London  world. 

Of  a  world  so  vast,  only  small  parts  can  be  known  to  a 
life-long  dweller.  To  the  sojourner  scarcely  more  will 
vouchsafe  itself  than  to  the  passing  stranger,  and  it  is 
chiefly  to  home-keeping  folk  who  have  never  broken 
their  ignorance  of  London  that  one  can  venture  to 
speak  with  confidence  from  the  cumulative  misgiving 
which  seems  to  sum  the  impressions  of  many  sojourns 
of  differing  lengths  and  dates.  One  could  have  used 
the  authority  of  a  profound  observer  after  the  first  few 
days  in  1861  and  1865,  but  the  experience  of  weeks 
stretching  to  months  in  1882  and  1883,  clouded  rather 
than  cleared  the  air  through  which  one  earliest  saw 
one's  London;  and  the  successive  pauses  in  1894  and 
1897,  with  the  longest  and  latest  stays  in  1904,  have 
but  served  to  confirm  one  in  the  diffident  inconclusion 
on  all  important  points  to  which  I  hope  the  pages  fol 
lowing  will  bear  witness. 

What  appears  to  be  a  fact,  fixed  and  absolute  amid 
a  shimmer  of  self-question,  is  that  any  one  coming  to 
London  in  the  beginning  of  April,  after  devious  delays 
in  the  South  and  West  of  England,  is  destined  to  have 
printed  upon  his  mental  films  a  succession  of  meteoro 
logical  changes  quite  past  computation.  Yet  if  one 
were  as  willing  to  be  honest  as  one  is  willing  to  be 
graphic,  one  would  allow  that  probably  the  weather 
on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic  was  then  behaving 
with  quite  as  swift  and  reckless  caprice.  The  difference 
is  that  at  home,  having  one's  proper  business,  one 
leaves  the  weather  to  look  after  its  own  affairs  in  its 

2 


METEOROLOGICAL    EMOTIONS 

own  way;  but  being  cast  upon  the  necessary  idleness 
of  sojourn  abroad,  one  becomes  critical,  becomes  cen 
sorious.  If  I  were  to  be  a  little  honester  still,  I  should 
confess  that  I  do  not  know  of  any  place  where  the  month 
of  April  can  be  meaner,  more  poison,  upon  occasion, 
than  in  New  York.  Of  course  it  has  its  moments  of 
relenting,  of  showing  that  warm,  soft,  winning  phase 
which  is  the  reverse  of  its  obverse  shrewishness,  when 
the  heart  melts  to  it  in  a  grateful  tenderness  for  the  wide, 
high,  blue  sky,  the  flood  of  white  light,  the  joy  of  the 
flocking  birds,  and  the  transport  of  the  buds  which  you 
can  all  but  hear  bursting  in  an  eager  rapture.  It  is  a 
sudden  glut  of  delight,  a  great,  wholesale  emotion  of 
pure  joy,  filling  the  soul  to  overflowing,  which  the  more 
scrupulously  adjusted  meteorology  of  England  is  in 
capable  of  at  least  so  instantly  imparting.  Our  weather 
is  of  public  largeness  and  universal  application,  and 
is  perhaps  rather  for  the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest 
number;  admirable  for  the  seed-time  and  harvest,  and 
for  the  growing  crops  in  the  seasons  between.  The 
English  weather  is  of  a  more  private  quality,  and  ap 
portioned  to  the  personal  preference,  or  the  personal 
endurance.  It  is  as  if  it  were  influenced  by  the  same 
genius  which  operates  the  whole  of  English  life,  and 
allows  each  to  identify  himself  as  the  object  of  specific 
care,  irrespective  of  the  interests  of  the  mass.  This 
may  be  a  little  too  fanciful,  and  I  do  not  insist  that  it 
is  scientific  or  even  sociological.  Yet  I  think  the  reader 
who  rejects  it  might  do  worse  than  agree  with  me  that 
the  first  impression  of  a  foreign  country  visited  or  re 
visited  is  stamped  in  a  sense  of  the  weather  and  the 
season. 

Nothing  made  me  so  much  at  home  in  England  as 
reading,  one  day,  that  there  was  a  lower  or  a  higher 

3 


LONDON    FILMS 

pressure  in  a  part  of  Scotland,  just  as  I  might  have 
read  of  a  lower  or  a  higher  pressure  in  the  region  of  the 
lakes.  "Now,"  I  said  to  myself,  "we  shall  have  some 
thing  like  real  weather,  the  weather  that  is  worth 
telegraphing  ahead,  and  is  going  to  be  decisively  this 
or  that."  But  I  could  not  see  that  the  weather  follow 
ing  differed  from  the  weather  we  had  been  having.  It 
was  the  same  small,  individual  weather,  offered  as  it 
were  in  samples  of  warm,  cold,  damp  and  dry,  but 
mostly  cold  and  damp,  especially  in-doors.  The  day 
often  opened  gray  and  cloudy,  but  by-and-by  you  found 
that  the  sun  was  unobtrusively  shining;  then  it  rained, 
and  there  was  rather  a  bitter  wind;  but  presently  it  was 
sunny  again,  and  you  felt  secure  of  the  spring,  for  the 
birds  were  singing:  the  birds  of  literature,  the  lark,  the 
golden-billed  blackbird,  the  true  robin,  and  the  various 
finches;  and  round  and  over  all  the  rooks  were  calling 
like  voices  in  a  dream.  Full  of  this  certainty  of  spring 
you  went  in-doors,  and  found  it  winter. 

If  you  can  keep  out-of-doors  in  England  you  are  very 
well,  and  that  is  why  the  English,  who  have  been 
philosophizing  their  climate  for  a  thousand  and  some 
odd  years,  keep  out-of-doors  so  much.  When  they  go 
in-doors  they  take  all  the  outer  air  they  can  with  them, 
instinctively  realizing  that  they  will  be  more  comfort 
able  with  it  than  in  the  atmosphere  awaiting  them.  If 
their  houses  could  be  built  reversible,  so  as  to  be  turned 
inside  out  in  some  weathers,  one  would  be  very  com 
fortable  in  them.  Lowell  used  whimsically  to  hold  that 
the  English  rain  did  not  wet  you,  and  he  might  have 
argued  that  the  English  cold  would  not  chill  you  if 
only  you  stayed  out-of-doors  in  it. 

Why  will  not  travellers  be  honest  with  foreign  coun 
tries?  Is  it  because  they  think  they  may  some  day 

4 


METEOROLOGICAL    EMOTIONS 

come  back?  For  my  part,  I  am  going  to  be  heroic,  and 
say  that  the  in-doors  cold  in  England  is  constant  suffer 
ing  to  the  American  born.  It  is  not  that  there  is  no 
sizzling  or  crackling  radiator,  no  tropic-breathing  regis 
ter;  but  that  the  grate  in  most  of  the  houses  that  the 
traveller  sees,  the  public-houses  namely,  seems  to  have 
shrunken  to  a  most  sordid  meanness  of  size.  In  Exeter, 
for  example,  where  there  is  such  a  beautiful  cathedral, 
one  found  a  bedroom  grate  of  the  capacity  of  a  quart 
pot,  and  the  heating  capabilities  of  a  glowworm.  I 
might  say  the  same  of  the  Plymouth  grate,  but  not  quite 
the  same  of  the  grates  of  Bath  or  Southampton;  if  I 
pause  before  arriving  at  the  grate  of  London,  it  is  be 
cause  daring  must  stop  somewhere.  I  think  it  is 
probable  that  the  American,  if  he  stayed  long  enough, 
would  heed  the  injunction  to  suffer  and  be  strong  from 
the  cold,  as  the  Englishman  has  so  largely  done,  but  I 
am  not  sure.  At  one  point  of  my  devious  progress  to 
the  capital  I  met  an  Englishman  who  had  spent  ten 
years  in  Canada,  and  who  constrained  me  to  a  mild 
deprecation  by  the  wrath  with  which  he  denounced  the 
in-doors  cold  he  had  found  everywhere  at  home.  He 
said  that  England  was  a  hundred,  five  hundred,  years 
behind  in  such  matters;  and  I  could  not  deny  that, 
even  when  cowrering  over  the  quart  pot  to  warm  the 
hands  and  face,  one  was  aware  of  a  gelid  medieval  back 
behind  one.  To  be  warm  all  round  in  an  English  house 
is  a  thing  impossible,  at  least  to  the  traveller,  who  finds 
the  natives  living  in  what  seems  to  him  a  whorl  of 
draughts.  In  entering  his  own  room  he  is  apt  to  find 
the  window  has  been  put  down,  but  this  is  not  merely  to 
let  in  some  of  the  outside  warmth;  it  is  also  to  make  a 
current  of  air  to  the  open  door.  Even  if  the  window 
has  not  been  put  down,  it  has  always  so  much  play  in  its 

5 


LONDON    FILMS 

frame,  to  allow  for  swelling  from  the  damp,  that  in  any 
thing  like  dry  weather  the  cold  whistles  round  it,  and 
you  do  not  know  which  way  to  turn  your  mediaeval 
back. 

In  the  corridors  of  one  of  the  provincial  hotels  there 
were  radiators,  but  not  hot  ones,  and  in  a  dining-room 
where  they  were  hot  the  natives  found  them  oppressive, 
while  the  foreigners  were  warming  their  fingers  on  the 
bottoms  of  their  plates.  Yet  it  is  useless  for  these  to 
pretend  that  the  suffering  they  experience  has  not  ap 
parently  resulted  in  the  strength  they  see.  Our  con 
temporary  ancestors  are  a  splendid-looking  race,  in  the 
higher  average,  and  if  in  the  lower  average  they  often 
look  pinched  and  stunted,  why,  we  are  not  ourselves 
giants  without  exception.  The  ancestral  race  does 
often  look  stunted  and  poor;  persons  of  small  build  and 
stature  abound;  and  nature  is 

"So  careful  of  the  single  type" 

of  beefy  Briton  as  to  show  it  very  rarely.  But  in  the 
matter  of  complexion,  if  we  count  that  a  proof  of  health, 
we  are  quite  out  of  it  in  comparison  with  the  English, 
and  beside  them  must  look  like  a  nation  of  invalids. 
There  are  few  English  so  poor  as  not,  in  youth  at  least,  to 
afford  cheeks  of  a  redness  which  all  our  money  could  not 
buy  with  us.  I  do  not  say  the  color  does  not  look  a 
little  overdone  in  cases,  or  that  the  violent  explosion  of 
pinks  and  roses,  especially  in  the  cheeks  of  small  children, 
does  not  make  one  pause  in  question  whether  paste  or 
putty  might  not  be  more  tasteful.  But  it  is  best  not  to 
be  too  critical.  Putty  and  paste,  apart  from  association, 
are  not  pretty  tints,  and  pinks  and  roses  are;  and  the 
English  children  look  not  only  fresher  but  sturdier  and 

6 


METEOROLOGICAL    EMOTIONS 

healthier  than  ours.  Whether  they  are  really  so  I  do 
not  know;  but  I  doubt  if  the  English  live  longer  than 
we  for  living  less  comfortably.  The  lower  classes  seem 
always  to  have  colds;  the  middle  classes,  rheumatism; 
and  the  upper,  gout,  by  what  one  sees  or  hears.  Rheu 
matism  one  might  almost  say  (or  quite,  if  one  did  not 
mind  what  one  said)  is  universal  in  England,  and  all 
ranks  of  society  have  the  facilities  for  it  in  the  in-doors 
cold  in  which  they  otherwise  often  undeniably  flourish. 
At  the  end,  it  is  a  question  of  whether  you  would  rather 
be  warm  and  well,  or  cold  and  well;  we  choose  the 
first  course  and  they  choose  the  last. 

If  we  leave  this  question  apart,  I  think  it  will  be  the 
experience  of  the  careful  observer  that  there  is  a  summit 
of  healthful  looks  in  England,  which  we  do  not  touch 
in  America,  whatever  the  large  table-land  or  foot-hill 
average  we  reach;  and  in  like  manner  there  is  an  ex 
ceptional  distinction  of  presence  as  one  encounters  it, 
rarely  enough,  in  the  London  streets,  which  one  never 
encounters  with  us.  I  am  not  envying  the  one,  or  at 
least  not  regretting  the  other.  Distinction  is  the  one 
thing  for  which  I  think  humanity  certainly  pays  too 
much;  only,  in  America,  we  pay  too  much  for  too  many 
other  things  to  take  any  great  comfort  in  our  want  of 
distinction.  I  own  the  truth  without  grief  or  shame, 
while  I  enjoy  the  sight  of  distinction  in  England  as  I 
enjoy  other  spectacles  for  which  I  cannot  help  letting 
the  English  pay  too  much.  I  was  not  appreciably  the 
poorer  myself,  perhaps  I  was  actually  the  richer,  in 
seeing,  one  fine  chill  Sunday  afternoon,  in  the  aristocratic 
region  where  I  was  taking  my  walk,  the  encounter  of  an 
elderly  gentleman  and  lady  who  bowed  to  each  other 
on  the  pavement  before  me,  and  then  went  and  came 
their  several  ways.  In  him  I  saw  that  his  distinction  was 


LONDON   FILMS 

passive  and  resided  largely  in  his  drab  spats,  but  hers  I 
beheld  active,  positive,  as  she  marched  my  way  with  the 
tall  cane  that  helped  her  steps,  herself  tall  in  proportion, 
with  a  head,  ashen  gray,  held  high,  and  a  straight  well- 
fitted  figure  dressed  in  such  keeping  that  there  was 
nothing  for  the  eye  to  dwell  on  in  her  various  black. 
She  looked  not  only  authoritative;  people  often  do  that 
with  us;  she  looked  authorized;  she  had  been  empowered 
by  the  vested  rights  and  interests  to  look  so  her  whole 
life;  one  could  not  be  mistaken  in  her,  any  more  than 
in  the  black  trees  and  their  electric-green  buds  in  the 
high-fenced  square,  or  in  the  vast,  high,  heavy,  hand 
some  houses  where,  in  the  cellary  or  sepulchral  cold, 
she  would  presently  resume  the  rheumatic  pangs  of 
which  the  comparative  warmth  of  the  outer  air  had 
momentarily  relieved  her  stately  bulk. 

But  what  is  this?  While  I  am  noting  the  terrors  of 
the  English  clime,  they  have  all  turned  themselves  into 
allures  and  delights.  There  have  come  three  or  four 
days,  since  I  arrived  in  London,  of  so  fine  and  mellow  a 
warmth,  of  skies  so  tenderly  blue,  and  so  heaped  with 
such  soft  masses  of  white  clouds,  that  one  wonders  what 
there  was  ever  to  complain  of.  In  the  parks  and  in  the 
gardened  spaces  which  so  abound,  the  leaves  have  grown 
perceptibly,  and  the  grass  thickened  so  that  you  can 
smell  it,  if  you  cannot  hear  it,  growing.  The  birds  in 
sist,  and  in  the  air  is  that  miraculous  lift,  as  if  nature, 
having  had  this  banquet  of  the  year  long  simmering,  had 
suddenly  taken  the  lid  off,  to  let  you  perceive  with  every 
gladdening  sense  what  a  feast  you  were  going  to  have 
presently  in  the  way  of  summer.  From  the  delectable 
vision  rises  a  subtile  haze,  which  veils  the  day  just  a 
little  from  its  own  loveliness,  and  lies  upon  the  sighing 
and  expectant  city  like  the  substance  of  a  dream  made 

8 


METEOROLOGICAL    EMOTIONS 

visible.  It  has  the  magic  to  transmute  you  to  this  sub 
stance  yourself,  so  that  while  you  dawdle  afoot,  or 
whisk  by  in  your  hansom,  or  rumble  earthquakingly 
aloft  on  your  omnibus-top,  you  are  aware  of  being  a 
part,  very  dim,  very  subtile,  of  the  passer's  blissful  con 
sciousness.  It  is  flattering,  but  you  feel  like  warn 
ing  him  not  to  go  in-doors,  or  he  will  lose  you  and 
all  the  rest  of  it;  for  having  tried  it  yourself  you  know 
that  it  is  still  winter  within  the  house  walls,  and  will  not 
be  April  there  till  well  into  June. 


II 

CIVIC  AND  SOCIAL  COMPARISONS,  MOSTLY  ODIOUS 

IT  might  be,  somewhat  overhardily,  advanced  that 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  positive  fact,  but  only 
relative  fact.  The  mind,  in  an  instinctive  perception 
of  this  hazardous  truth,  clings  to  contrast  as  the  only 
basis  of  inference,  and  in  now  taking  my  tenth  or  twen 
tieth  look  at  London  I  have  been  careful  to  keep  about 
me  a  pocket  vision  of  New  York,  so  as  to  see  what  Lon 
don  is  like  by  making  constantly  sure  what  it  is  not  like. 
A  pocket  vision,  say,  of  Paris,  would  not  serve  the  same 
purpose.  That  is  a  city  of  a  legal  loveliness,  of  a  beauty 
obedient  to  a  just  municipal  control,  of  a  grandeur 
studied  and  authorized  in  proportion  and  relation  to  the 
design  of  a  magnificent  entirety;  it  is  a  capital  nobly 
realized  on  lines  nobly  imagined.  But  New  York  and 
London  may  always  be  intelligibly  compared  because 
they  are  both  the  effect  of  an  indefinite  succession  of 
anarchistic  impulses,  sometimes  correcting  and  some 
times  promoting,  or  at  best  sometimes  annulling  one 
another.  Each  has  been  mainly  built  at  the  pleasure 
of  the  private  person,  with  the  community  now  and 
then  swooping  down  upon  him,  and  turning  him  out  of 
house  and  home  to  the  common  advantage.  Nothing 
but  our  racial  illogicality  has  saved  us  from  the  effect 
of  our  racial  anarchy  in  the  social  structure  as  well  as  the 
material  structure,  but  if  we  could  see  London  and 

10 


CIVIC   AND    SOCIAL   COMPARISONS 

New  York  as  lawless  in  the  one  way  as  in  the  other, 
we  should  perhaps  see  how  ugly  they  collectively  are. 

The  sum  of  such  involuntary  reflection  with  me 
has  been  the  perception  that  London  was  and  is  and 
shall  be,  and  New  York  is  and  shall  be,  but  has  hardly 
yet  been.  New  York  is  therefore  one-third  less  morally, 
as  she  is  one-third  less  numerically,  than  London.  In 
her  future  she  has  no  past,  but  only  a  present  to  retrieve; 
though  perhaps  a  present  like  hers  is  enough.  She  is 
also  one  less  architecturally  than  London;  she  is  two- 
thirds  as  splendid,  as  grand,  as  impressive.  In  fact,  if 
I  more  closely  examine  my  pocket  vision,  I  am  afraid 
that  I  must  hedge  from  this  modest  claim,  for  we  have 
as  yet  nothing  to  compare  with  at  least  a  half  of  London 
magnificence,  whatever  we  may  have  in  the  seventeen 
or  eighteen  hundred  years  that  shall  bring  us  of  her 
actual  age.  As  we  go  fast  in  all  things,  we  may  then 
surpass  her;  but  this  is  not  certain,  for  in  her  more 
deliberate  way  she  goes  fast,  too.  In  the  mean  time 
the  materials  of  comparison,  as  they  lie  dispersed  in  the 
pocket  vision,  seem  few.  The  sky-scrapers,  Brooklyn 
Bridge,  Madison  Square  Garden,  and  some  vast  rocketing 
hotels  offer  themselves  rather  shrinkingly  for  the  con 
trast  with  those  miles  of  imperial  and  municipal  archi 
tecture  which  in  London  make  you  forget  the  leagues 
of  mean  little  houses,  and  remember  the  palaces,  the 
law-courts,  the  great  private  mansions,  the  dignified  and 
shapely  flats,  the  large  department  stores,  the  immense 
hotels,  the  bridges,  the  monuments  of  every  kind. 

One  reason,  I  think,  why  London  is  so  much  more 
striking  is  in  the  unbroken  line  which  the  irregularly 
divided  streets  often  present  to  the  passer.  Here  is  a 
chance  for  architecture  to  extend,  while  with  us  it  has 

only  a  chance  to  tower,  on  the  short  up-town  block 

11 


LONDON   FILMS 

which  is  the  extreme  dimension  of  our  proudest  edifice, 
public  or  private.  Another  reason  is  in  the  London 
atmosphere,  which  deepens  and  heightens  all  the  effects, 
while  the  lunar  bareness  of  our  perspectives  mercilessly 
reveals  the  facts.  After  you  leave  the  last  cliff  behind 
on  lower  Broadway  the  only  incident  of  the  long,  straight 
avenue  which  distracts  you  from  the  varied  common 
place  of  the  commercial  structures  on  either  hand  is  the 
loveliness  of  Grace  Church;  but  in  the  Strand  and  Fleet 
Street  you  have  a  succession  of  edifices  which  overwhelm 
you  with  the  sense  of  a  life  in  which  trade  is  only  one  of 
the  incidents.  If  the  day  is  such  as  a  lover  of  the 
picturesque  would  choose,  or  may  rather  often  have 
without  choosing,  when  the  scene  is  rolled  in  vaporous 
smoke,  and  a  lurid  gloom  hovers  from  the  hidden  sky, 
you  have  an  effect  of  majesty  and  grandeur  that  no 
other  city  can  offer.  As  the  shadow  momently  thickens 
or  thins  in  the  absence  or  the  presence  of  the  yellowish- 
green  light,  the  massive  structures  are  shown  or  hid,  and 
the  meaner  houses  render  the  rifts  between  more  im 
pressively  chasmal.  The  tremendous  volume  of  life 
that  flows  through  the  narrow  and  winding  channels 
past  the  dun  cliffs  and  pinnacles,  and  the  lower  banks 
which  the  lesser  buildings  form,  is  such  that  the  highest 
tide  of  Broadway  or  Fifth  Avenue  seems  a  scanty  ebb 
beside  it.  The  swelling  and  towering  omnibuses,  the 
huge  trucks  and  wagons  and  carriages,  the  impetuous 
hansoms  and  the  more  sobered  four-wheelers,  the  pony- 
carts,  donkey  -  carts,  handcarts,  and  bicycles  which 
fearlessly  find  their  way  amid  the  turmoil,  with  foot- 
passengers  winding  in  and  out,  and  covering  the  side 
walks  with  their  multitude,  give  the  effect  of  a  single 
monstrous  organism,  which  writhes  swiftly  along  the 
channel  where  it  had  run  in  the  figure  of  a  flood  till 

12 


CIVIC   AND   SOCIAL   COMPARISONS 

you  were  tired  of  that  metaphor.  You  are  now  a 
molecule  of  that  vast  organism,  as  you  sit  under  your 
umbrella  on  your  omnibus-top,  with  the  public  water 
proof  apron  across  your  knees,  and  feel  in  supreme 
degree  the  insensate  exultation  of  being  part  of  the 
largest  thing  of  its  kind  in  the  world,  or  perhaps  the 
universe. 

It  is  an  emotion  which  supports  the  American  visitor 
even  against  the  immensity  he  shares,  and  he  is  able  to 
reflect  that  New  York  would  not  look  so  relatively 
little,  so  comparatively  thin,  if  New  York  were  a  capital 
on  the  same  lines  as  London.  If  New  York  were,  like 
London,  a  political  as  well  as  a  commercial  capital,  she 
would  have  the  national  edifices  of  Washington  added 
to  the  sky-scrapers  in  which  she  is  now  unrivalled,  and 
her  competition  would  be  architecturally  much  more 
formidable  than  it  is.  She  w^ould  be  the  legislative 
centre  of  the  different  States  of  the  Union,  as  London 
is  of  the  different  counties  of  the  United  Kingdom;  she 
would  have  collected  in  her  borders  all  their  capitols 
and  public  buildings;  and  their  variety,  if  not  dignity, 
would  valiantly  abet  her  in  the  rivalry  from  which  one 
must  now  recoil  on  her  behalf.  She  could  not,  of  course, 
except  on  such  rare  days  of  fog  as  seem  to  greet  Eng 
lishmen  in  New  York  on  purpose  to  vex  us,  have  the 
adventitious  aid  which  the  London  atmosphere  renders; 
her  air  is  of  such  a  helpless  sincerity  that  nothing  in  it 
shows  larger  than  it  is;  no  mist  clothes  the  sky-scraper 
in  gigantic  vagueness,  the  hideous  tops  soar  into  the 
clear  heaven  distinct  in  their  naked  ugliness;  and  the 
low  buildings  cower  unrelieved  about  their  bases. 
Nothing  could  be  done  in  palliation  of  the  comparative 
want  of  antiquity  in  New  York,  for  the  present,  at 
least;  but  it  is  altogether  probable  that  in  the  fulfilment 

13 


LONDON   FILMS 

of  her  destiny  she  will  be  one  day  as  old  as  London 
now  is. 

If  one  thinks,  however,  how  old  London  now  is,  it 
is  rather  crazing;  much  more  crazing  than  the  same 
sort  of  thought  in  the  cities  of  lands  more  exclusively 
associated  with  antiquity.  In  Italy  you  forget  the 
present;  there  seems  nothing  above  the  past,  or  only 
so  thin  a  layer  of  actuality  that  you  have  scarcely  the 
sense  of  it.  In  England  you  remember  with  an  effort 
Briton,  and  Roman,  and  Saxon,  and  Norman,  and  the 
long  centuries  of  the  medieval  and  modern  English; 
the  living  interests,  ambitions,  motives,  are  so  dense 
that  you  cannot  penetrate  them  and  consort  quietly 
with  the  dead  alone.  Men  whose  names  are  in  the  di 
rectory  as  well  as  men  whose  names  are  in  history, 
keep  you  company,  and  push  the  shades  of  heroes, 
martyrs,  saints,  poets,  and  princes  to  the  wall.  They 
do  not  shoulder  them  willingly  out  of  the  way,  but 
helplessly;  there  is  no  place  in  the  world  where  the 
material  present  is  so  reverently,  so  tenderly  mindful 
of  the  material  past.  Perhaps,  therefore,  I  felt  safe  in 
so  largely  leaving  the  English  past  to  the  English  pres 
ent,  and,  having  in  London  long  ago  satisfied  that  hunger 
for  the  old  which  the  new  American  brings  with  him  to 
Europe,  I  now  went  about  enjoying  the  modern  in  its 
manifold  aspects  and  possibly  fancying  characteristic 
traits  where  I  did  not  find  them.  I  did  not  care  how 
trivial  some  of  these  were,  but  I  hesitate  to  confide 
to  the  more  serious  reader  that  I  was  at  one  moment 
much  interested  in  what  seemed  the  growing  informal 
ity  of  Englishmen  in  dress,  as  I  noted  it  in  the  streets 
and  parks,  or  thought  I  noted  it. 

To  my  vision,  or  any  illusion,  they  wore  every  sort  of 
careless  cap,  slouch  felt  hat,  and  straw  hat;  any  sort 

14 


CIVIC   AND    SOCIAL   COMPARISONS 

of  tunic,  jacket,  and  cutaway.  The  top-hat  and  frock- 
coat  still  appear,  but  their  combination  is  evidently  no 
longer  imperative,  as  it  formerly  was  at  all  daytime 
functions.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  you  do  not 
often  see  that  stately  garment  on  persons  of  author 
ity,  but  only  that  it  is  apparently  not  of  the  suprem 
acy  expressed  in  the  drawings  of  Du  Maurier  in  the 
eighties  and  nineties  of  the  last  century.  Certainly, 
when  it  comes  to  the  artist  at  Truefitt's  wearing  a 
frock-coat  while  cutting  your  hair,  you  cannot  help 
asking  yourself  whether  its  hour  has  not  struck.  Yet, 
when  one  has  said  this,  one  must  hedge  from  a  con 
jecture  so  extreme.  The  king  wears  a  frock-coat,  a 
long,  gray  one,  with  a  white  top -hat  and  lavender 
gloves,  and  those  who  like  to  be  like  a  king  conform  to 
his  taste.  No  one,  upon  his  life,  may  yet  wear  a  frock 
and  a  derby,  but  many  people  now  wear  top -hats, 
though  black  ones,  with  sack  -  coats,  with  any  sort  of 
coats;  and,  above  all,  the  Londoner  affects  in  summer  a 
straw  hat  either  of  a  flat  top  and  a  pasteboard  stiffness, 
or  of  the  operatically  picturesque  Alpine  pattern,  or  of  a 
slouching  Panama  shapelessness.  What  was  often  the 
derision,  the  abhorrence  of  the  English  in  the  dress  of 
other  nations  has  now  become  their  pleasure,  and,  with 
the  English  genius  of  doing  what  they  like,  it  may  be 
that  they  overdo  their  pleasure.  But  at  the  worst  the 
effect  is  more  interesting  than  our  uniformity.  The  con 
ventional  evening  dress  alone  remains  inviolate,  but 
how  long  this  will  remain,  who  can  say?  The  simple- 
hearted  American,  arriving  with  his  scrupulous  dress 
suit  in  London,  may  yet  find  himself  going  out  to  dinner 
with  a  company  of  Englishmen  in  white  linen  jackets 
or  tennis  flannels. 

If,  however,  the  men's  dress  in  England  is  informal, 

15 


LONDON   FILMS 

impatient,  I  think  one  will  be  well  within  the  lines  of 
safety  in  saying  that  above  everything  the  English 
women's  dress  expresses  sentiment,  though  I  suppose  it 
is  no  more  expressive  of  personal  sentiment  than  the  chic 
of  our  women's  dress  is  expressive  of  personal  chic; 
in  either  case  the  dressmaker,  male  or  female,  has  im 
personally  much  to  do  with  it.  Under  correction  of 
those  countrywomen  of  ours  who  will  not  allow  that 
the  Englishwomen  know  how  to  dress,  I  will  venture 
to  say  that  then*  expression  of  sentiment  in  dress  is 
charming,  but  how  charming  it  comparatively  is  I 
shall  be  far  from  saying.  I  will  only  make  so  bold 
as  to  affirm  that  it  seems  more  adapted  to  the  slender 
fluency  of  youth  than  some  realizations  of  the  American 
ideal;  and  that  after  the  azaleas  and  rhododendrons 
in  the  Park  there  is  nothing  in  nature  more  suggestive 
of  girlish  sweetness  and  loveliness  than  the  costumes 
in  which  the  wearers  flow  by  the  flowery  expanses  in 
carriage  or  on  foot.  The  colors  worn  are  often  as  coura 
geous  as  the  vegetable  tints;  the  vaporous  air  softens 
and  subdues  crimsons  and  yellows  that  I  am  told  would 
shriek  aloud  in  our  arid  atmosphere;  but  mostly  the 
shades  worn  tend  to  soft  pallors,  lavender,  and  pink,  and 
creamy  white.  A  group  of  girlish  shapes  in  these  colors, 
seen  newly  lighted  at  a  doorway  from  a  passing  carriage, 
gave  as  they  pressed  eagerly  forward  a  supreme  effect 
of  that  sentiment  in  English  dress  which  I  hope  I  am 
not  recreant  in  liking.  Occasionally,  also,  there  was  a 
scarf,  lightly  escaping,  lightly  caught,  which,  with  an 
endearing  sash,  renewed  for  a  fleeting  moment  a  by 
gone  age  of  Sensibility,  as  we  find  it  recorded  in  many  a 
graceful  page,  on  many  a  glowing  canvas. 

Pictorial,    rather    than    picturesque,    might    be    the 
word  for  the  present  dress  of  Englishwomen.    It  forms 

16 


CIVIC   AND    SOCIAL   COMPARISONS 

in  itself  a  lovely  picture  to  the  eye,  and  is  not  merely 
the  material  or  the  inspiration  of  a  picture.  It  is 
therefore  the  more  difficult  of  transference  to  the 
imagination  of  the  reader  who  has  not  also  been  a  spec 
tator,  and  before  such  a  scene  as  one  may  witness  in  a 
certain  space  of  the  Park  on  a  fair  Sunday  after  church 
in  the  morning,  or  before  dinner  in  the  early  evening, 
the  boldest  kodak  may  well  close  its  single  eye  in  despair. 
As  yet  even  the  mental  photograph  cannot  impart  the 
tints  of  nature,  and  the  reader  who  wishes  to  assist  at 
this  scene  must  do  his  best  to  fancy  them  for  himself. 
At  the  right  moment  of  the  ripening  London  season  the 
foliage  of  the  trees  is  densely  yet  freshly  green  and 
flatteringly  soft  to  the  eye;  the  grass  below  has  that 
closeness  of  texture  which  only  English  grass  has  the 
secret  of.  At  fit  distances  the  wide  beds  of  rhododen 
drons  and  azaleas  are  glowing;  the  sky  is  tenderly  blue, 
and  the  drifted  clouds  in  it  are  washed  clean  of  their 
London  grime.  If  it  is  in  the  afternoon,  these  beautiful 
women  begin  to  appear  about  the  time  when  you  may 
have  bidden  yourself  abandon  the  hope  of  them  for 
that  day.  Some  drift  from  the  carriages  that  draw  up 
on  the  drive  beside  the  sacred  close  where  they  are  to 
sit  on  penny  chairs,  spreading  far  over  the  green;  others 
glide  on  foot  from  elect  neighborhoods,  or  from  vehicles 
left  afar,  perhaps  that  they  may  give  themselves  the 
effect  of  coming  informally.  They  arrive  in  twos  and 
threes,  young  girls  commonly  with  their  mothers,  but 
sometimes  together,  in  varied  raptures  of  millinery,  and 
with  the  rainbow  range  in  their  delicately  floating, 
delicately  clinging  draperies.  But  their  hats,  their 
gowns,  always  express  sentiment,  even  when  they  can 
not  always  express  simplicity;  and  the  just  observer  is 
obliged  to  own  that  their  calm  faces  often  express,  if 

17 


LONDON    FILMS 

not  simplicity,  sentiment.  Their  beauty  is  very,  very 
great,  not  a  beauty  of  coloring  alone,  but  a  beauty  of 
feature  which  is  able  to  be  patrician  without  being 
unkind;  and  if,  as  some  American  women  say,  they  do 
not  carry  themselves  well,  it  takes  an  American  woman 
to  see  it.  They  move  naturally  and  lightly — that  is, 
the  young  girls  do;  mothers  in  England,  as  elsewhere, 
are  apt  to  put  on  weight;  but  many  of  the  mothers  are 
as  handsome  in  their  well-wearing  English  way  as  their 
daughters. 

Several  irregular  spaces  are  enclosed  by  low  iron 
barriers,  and  in  one  of  these  the  arriving  groups  of  au 
thorized  people  found  other  people  of  their  kind,  where 
the  unauthorized  people  seemed  by  common  consent 
to  leave  them.  There  was  especially  one  enclosure 
which  seemed  consecrated  to  the  highest  comers;  it  was 
not  necessary  that  they  should  make  the  others  feel 
they  were  not  wanted  there;  the  others  felt  it  of  them 
selves,  and  did  not  attempt  to  enter  that  especial  fairy 
ring,  or  fairy  triangle.  Those  within  looked  as  much 
at  home  as  if  in  their  own  drawing-rooms,  and  after  the 
usual  greetings  of  friends  sat  down  in  their  penny  chairs 
for  the  talk  which  the  present  kodak  would  not  have 
overheard  if  it  could. 

If  any  one  were  to  ask  me  how  I  knew  that  these 
beautiful  creatures  were  of  supreme  social  value,  I 
should  be  obliged  to  own  that  it  was  largely  an  assump 
tion  based  upon  hearsay.  For  all  I  can  avouch  person 
ally  in  the  matter  they  might  have  been  women  come 
to  see  the  women  who  had  not  come.  Still,  if  the  effects 
of  high  breeding  are  visible,  then  they  were  the  sort 
they  looked.  Not  only  the  women,  but  the  men,  old 
and  young,  had  the  aristocratic  air  which  is  not  aggres 
sive,  the  patrician  bearing  which  is  passive  and  not 

18 


THE    CARRIAGES    DRAWN    UP    BESIDE    THE    SACRED    CLOSE 


CIVIC   AND   SOCIAL   COMPARISONS 

active,  and  which  in  the  English  seems  consistent  with 
so  much  that  is  human  and  kindly.  There  is  always 
the  question  whether  this  sort  of  game  is  worth  the 
candle;  but  that  is  a  moral  consideration  which  would 
take  me  too  far  from  the  little  scene  I  am  trying  to  sug 
gest;  it  is  sufficient  for  the  present  purpose  that  the 
English  think  it  is  worth  it.  A  main  fact  of  the  scene 
was  the  constant  movement  of  distinguished  figures 
within  the  sacred  close,  and  up  and  down  the  paths 
past  the  rows  of  on-lookers  on  their  penny  chairs.  The 
distinguished  figures  were  apparently  not  the  least 
molested  by  the  multiplied  and  concentrated  gazes  of 
the  on-lookers,  who  were,  as  it  were,  outside  the  window, 
and  of  the  street.  What  struck  one  accustomed  to  the 
heterogeneous  Sunday  crowds  of  Central  Park,  where 
any  such  scene  would  be  so  inexpressibly  impossible, 
was  the  almost  wholly  English  personnel  of  the  crowd 
within  and  without  the  sacred  close.  Here  and  there 
a  Continental  presence,  French  or  German  or  Italian, 
pronounced  its  nationality  in  dress  and  bearing;  one  of 
the  many  dark  subject  races  of  Great  Britain  was  repre 
sented  in  the  swarthy  skin  and  lustrous  black  hair  and 
eyes  of  a  solitary  individual;  there  were  doubtless  various 
colonials  among  the  spectators,  and  in  one's  nerves  one 
was  aware  of  some  other  Americans.  But  these  ex 
ceptions  only  accented  the  absolutely  English  domi 
nance  of  the  spectacle.  The  alien  elements  were  less 
evident  in  the  observed  than  in  the  observers,  where, 
beyond  the  barrier,  which  there  was  nothing  to  prevent 
their  passing,  they  sat  in  passive  rows,  in  passive  pairs, 
in  passive  ones,  and  stared  and  stared.  The  observers 
were  mostly  men,  and  largely  men  of  the  age  when  the 
hands  folded  on  the  top  of  the  stick  express  a  pause 
in  the  emotions  and  the  energies  which  has  its  pathos. 

19 


LONDON    FILMS 

There  were  women  among  them,  of  course,  but  the 
women  were  also  of  the  age  when  the  keener  sensibilities 
are  taking  a  rest;  and  such  aliens  of  their  sex  as  qualified 
the  purely  English  nature  of  the  affair  lost  whatever 
was  aggressive  in  their  difference. 

It  was  necessary  to  the  transaction  of  the  drama 
that  from  time  to  time  the, agents  of  the  penny-chair 
company  should  go  about  in  the  close  and  collect  money 
for  the  chairs;  and  it  became  a  question,  never  rightly 
solved,  how  the  ladies  who  had  come  unattended  man 
aged,  with  their  pocketless  dresses,  to  carry  coins  un 
equalled  in  bulk  since  the  iron  currency  of  Sparta;  or 
whether  they  held  the  pennies  frankly  in  their  hands 
till  they  paid  them  away.  In  England  the  situation, 
if  it  is  really  the  situation,  is  always  accepted  with  im 
plicit  confidence,  and  if  it  had  been  the  custom  to  bring 
pennies  in  their  hands,  these  ladies  would  have  no 
more  minded  doing  it  than  they  minded  being  looked 
at  by  people  whose  gaze  dedicated  them  to  an  inviolate 
superiority. 

With  us  the  public  affirmation  of  class,  if  it  were 
imaginable,  could  not  be  imaginable  except  upon  the 
terms  of  a  mutinous  protest  in  the  spectators  which 
would  not  have  been  less  real  for  being  silent.  But 
again  I  say  the  thing  would  not  have  been  possible  with 
us  in  New  York;  though  in  Newport,  where  the  aristo 
cratic  tradition  is  said  to  have  been  successfully  trans 
planted  to  our  plutocratic  soil,  something  analogous 
might  at  least  be  dramatized.  Elsewhere  that  tradi 
tion  does  not  come  to  flower  in  the  open  American  air; 
it  is  potted  and  grown  under  glass;  and  can  be  carried 
out-doors  only  under  special  conditions.  The  American 
must  still  come  to  England  for  the  realization  of  certain 
social  ideals  towards  which  we  may  be  now  straining,  but 

20 


CIVIC   AND   SOCIAL   COMPARISONS 

which  do  not  yet  enjoy  general  acceptance.  The  reader 
who  knows  New  York  has  but  to  try  and  fancy  its  best, 
or  even  its  better,  society  dispersing  itself  on  certain 
grassy  limits  of  Central  Park  on  a  Sunday  noon  or  after 
noon;  or,  on  some  week-day  evening,  leaving  its  equipages 
along  the  drives  and  strolling  out  over  the  herbage;  or 
receiving  in  its  carriages  the  greetings  of  acquaintance 
who  make  their  way  in  and  out  among  the  whpels. 
Police  and  populace  would  join  forces  in  their  several 
sorts  to  spoil  a  spectacle  which  in  Hyde  Park  appeals, 
in  high  degree,  to  the  aesthetic  sense,  and  which  might 
stimulate  the  historic  imagination  to  feats  of  agreeable 
invention  if  one  had  that  sort  of  imagination. 

The  spectacle  is  a  condition  of  that  old,  secure  society 
which  we  have  not  yet  lived  long  enough  to  have  known, 
and  which  we  very  probably  never  shall  know.  Such 
civilization  as  we  have  will  continue  to  be  public  and 
impersonal,  like  our  politics,  and  our  society  in  its 
specific  events  will  remain  within  walls.  It  could  not 
manifest  itself  outside  without  being  questioned,  chal 
lenged,  denied;  and  upon  reflection  there  might  appear 
reasons  why  it  is  well  so. 


Ill 

SHOWS  AND  SIDE-SHOWS  OF  STATE 

WE  are  quite  as  domestic  as  the  English,  but  with 
us  the  family  is  of  the  personal  life,  while  with 
them  it  is  of  the  general  life,  so  that  when  their  domes 
ticity  imparts  itself  to  their  out-door  pleasures  no  one 
feels  it  strange.  One  has  read  of  something  like  this 
without  the  sense  of  it  which  constantly  penetrates  one 
in  London.  One  must  come  to  England  in  order  to 
realize  from  countless  little  occasions,  little  experiences, 
how  entirely  English  life,  public  as  well  as  private, 
is  an  affair  of  family.  We  know  from  our  reading  how 
a  comparatively  few  families  administer,  if  they  do  not 
govern,  but  we  have  still  to  learn  how  the  other  families 
are  apparently  content  to  share  the  form  in  which  au 
thority  resides,  since  they  cannot  share  the  authority. 
At  the  very  top — I  offer  the  conjecture  towards  the 
solution  of  that  mystery  which  constantly  bewilders 
the  republican  witness,  the  mystery  of  loyalty — is,  of 
course,  the  royal  family;  and  the  rash  conclusion  of  the 
American  is  that  it  is  revered  because  it  is  the  royal 
family.  But  possibly  a  truer  interpretation  of  the  fact 
would  be  that  it  is  dear  and  sacred  to  the  vaster  British 
public  because  it  is  the  royal  family.  A  bachelor  king 
could  hardly  dominate  the  English  imagination  like  a 
royal  husband  and  father,  even  if  his  being  a  husband 
and  father  were  not  one  of  the  implications  of  that  tacit 

22 


SHOWS   AND    SIDE-SHOWS   OF   STATE 

Constitution  in  whose  silence  English  power  resides. 
With  us,  family  has  less  and  less  to  do  with  society, 
even;  but  with  the  English  it  has  more  and  more  to  do, 
since  the  royal  family  is  practically  without  political 
power,  and  not  only  may,  but  almost  must,  devote 
itself  to  society.  It  goes  and  comes  on  visits  to  other 
principalities  and  powers;  it  opens  parliaments;  it  lays 
corner-stones  and  presides  at  the  dedication  of  edifices 
of  varied  purpose ;  it  receives  deputations  and  listens  to 
addresses;  it  holds  courts  and  levees;  it  reviews  regi 
ments  and  fleets,  and  assists  at  charity  entertainments 
and  at  plays  and  shows  of  divers  sorts;  it  plays  races; 
it  is  in  constant  demand  for  occasions  requiring  exalt 
ed  presences  for  their  prosperity.  These  events  seem 
public,  and  if  they  were  imaginable  of  a  democracy 
like  ours  they  would  be  so;  but  in  the  close-linked  order 
of  English  things  they  are  social,  they  are  domestic, 
they  are  from  one  family  to  every  other  family  directly 
or  indirectly;  the  king  is  for  these  ends  not  more  a 
royalty  than  the  rest  of  his  family,  and  for  the  most 
part  he  acts  as  a  family  man;  his  purely  official  acts 
are  few.  Things  that  in  a  republic  are  entirely  personal, 
as  marriages,  births,  christenings,  deaths,  and  burials, 
whether  of  high  or  low,  in  a  monarchy  are,  if  they  affect 
royalty,  of  public  and  national  concern,  and  it  would 
not  be  easy  to  show  how  one  royal  act  differed  from 
another  in  greater  or  less  publicity. 

If  you  were  of  a  very  bold  conjecture,  or  of  a  willing 
ness  to  generalize  from  wholly  insufficient  grounds,  and 
take  the  chances  of  hitting  or  missing,  you  might  affirm 
a  domestic  simplicity  of  feeling  in  some  phases  of  func 
tions  exalted  far  beyond  the  range  of  republican  experi 
ences  or  means  of  comparison.  In  the  polite  intelligence 
which  we  sometimes  have  cabled  to  our  press  at  home, 

23 


LONDON    FILMS 

by  more  than  usually  ardent  enterprise,  one  may  have 
read  that  the  king  held  a  levee  at  St.  James's;  and  one 
conceived  of  it  as  something  dramatic,  something  his 
toric,  something,  on  the  grand  scale,  civic.  But  if  one 
happened  to  be  walking  in  Pall  Mall  on  the  morning  of 
that  levee,  one  saw  merely  a  sort  of  irregular  coming 
and  going  in  almost  every  kind  of  vehicle,  or,  as  regarded 
the  spiritual  and  temporal  armies,  sometimes  on  foot. 
A  thin  fringe  of  rather  incurious  but  not  unfriendly  by 
standers  lined  the  curbstone,  and  looked  at  the  people 
arriving  in  the  carriages,  victorias,  hansoms,  and  four- 
wheelers;  behind  the  bystanders  loitered  dignitaries 
of  the  church;  and  military  and  naval  officers  made  their 
way  through  the  fringe  and  crossed  the  street  among 
the  wheels  and  horses.  No  one  concerned  seemed  to 
feel  anything  odd  in  the  effect,  though  to  the  unwonted 
American  the  sight  of  a  dignitary  in  full  canonicals  or 
regimentals  going  to  a  royal  levee  in  a  cab  or  on  foot  is 
not  a  vision  which  realizes  the  ideal  inspired  by  ro 
mance.  At  one  moment  a  middle-aged  lady  in  the  line 
of  vehicles  put  her  person  well  out  of  the  window  of  her 
four-wheeler,  and  craned  her  head  up  to  instruct  her 
driver  in  something.  She  may  not  have  been  going 
to  the  levee,  but  one  felt  that  if  she  had  been  she 
would  still  have  done  what  it  abashed  the  alien  to 
see. 

We  are,  in  fact,  much  more  exacting  than  the  English 
in  matters  of  English  state ;  we,  who  have  no  state  at  all 
require  them  to  live  up  to  theirs,  just  as  quite  plain,  el 
derly  observers  expect  every  woman  to  be  young  and 
pretty,  and  take  it  hard  when  she  is  not.  But  possibly 
the  secret  of  enduring  so  much  state  as  the  English 
have  lies  in  knowing  how  and  when  to  shirk  it,  to  drop 
it.  No  doubt,  the  alien  who  counted  upon  this  fact, 

24 


SUNDAY   AFTERNOON,    HYDE    PARK 


SHOWS   AND    SIDE-SHOWS   OF   STATE 

if  it  is  a  fact,  would  find  his  knuckles  warningly  rapped 
when  he  reached  too  confidingly  through  air  that  seemed 
empty  of  etiquette.  But  the  rapping  would  be  very 
gentle,  very  kindly,  for  this  is  the  genius  of  English  rule 
where  it  is  not  concerned  with  criminal  offence.  You 
must  keep  off  wellnigh  all  the  grass  on  the  island,  but 
you  are  "requested"  to  keep  off  it,  and  not  forbidden 
in  the  harsh  imperatives  of  our  brief  authorities.  It  is 
again  the  difference  between  the  social  and  the  public, 
which  is  perhaps  the  main  difference  between  an  oli 
garchy  and  a  democracy.  The  sensibilities  are  more 
spared  in  the  one  and  the  self-respect  in  the  other, 
though  this  is  saying  it  too  loosely,  and  may  not  be  say 
ing  it  truly;  it  is  only  a  conjecture  with  which  I  am  par 
leying  while  I  am  getting  round  to  add  that  such  part 
of  the  levee  as  I  saw  in  plain  day,  though  there  was 
vastly  more  of  it,  was  much  less  filling  to  the  imagination 
than  a  glimpse  which  I  had  of  a  court  one  night.  I  am 
rather  proud  of  being  able  to  explain  that  the  late 
queen  held  court  in  the  early  afternoon  and  the  present 
king  holds  court  at  night;  but,  lest  any  envious  reader 
suspect  me  of  knowing  the  fact  at  first-hand,  I  hasten 
to  say  that  the  glimpse  I  had  of  the  function  that  night 
only  revealed  to  me  in  my  cab  a  royal  coach  driving 
out  of  a  palace  gate,  and  showing  larger  than  human, 
through  a  thin  rain,  the  blood-red  figures  of  the  coach 
men  and  footmen  gowned  from  head  to  foot  in  their 
ensanguined  colors,  with  the  black-gleaming  body  of 
the  coach  between  them,  and  the  horses  trampling 
heraldically  before  out  of  the  legendary  past.  The 
want  of  definition  in  the  fact,  which  I  beheld  in  softly 
blurred  outline,  enhanced  its  value,  which  was  so  su 
preme  that  I  could  not  perhaps  do  justice  to  the  vague 
splendors  of  inferior  courtward  equipages,  as  my  cab 

25 


LONDON    FILMS 

flashed  by  them,  moving  in  a  slow  line  towards  the  front 
of  Buckingham  Palace. 

The  carriages  were  doubtless  full  of  titles,  any  one  of 
which  would  enrich  my  page  beyond  the  dreams  of 
fiction,  and  it  is  said  that  in  the  time  of  the  one-o'clock 
court  they  used  to  receive  a  full  share  of  the  attention 
which  I  could  only  so  scantily  and  fleetingly  bestow. 
They  were  often  halted,  as  that  night  I  saw  them 
halting,  in  their  progress,  and  this  favored  the  plebeian 
witnesses,  who  ranged  along  their  course  and  invited 
themselves  and  one  another  to  a  study  of  the  looks 
and  dresses  of  the  titles,  and  to  open  comment  on  both. 
The  study  and  the  comment  must  have  had  their  limits; 
the  observed  knew  how  much  to  bear  if  the  observers 
did  not  know  how  little  to  forbear;  and  it  is  not  probable 
that  the  London  spectators  went  the  lengths  which 
our  outsiders  go  in  trying  to  verify  an  English  duke 
who  is  about  to  marry  an  American  heiress.  The  Lon 
don  vulgar,  if  not  better  bred  than  our  vulgar,  are  better 
fed  on  the  sight  of  social  grandeur,  and  have  not  a  life 
long  famine  to  satisfy,  as  ours  have.  Besides,  whatever 
gulf  birth  and  wealth  have  fixed  between  the  English 
classes,  it  is  mystically  bridged  by  that  sentiment  of 
family  which  I  have  imagined  the  ruling  influence  in 
England.  In  a  country  where  equality  has  been  glori 
fied  as  it  has  been  in  ours,  the  contrast  of  conditions 
must  breed  a  bitterness  in  those  of  a  lower  condition 
which  is  not  in  their  hearts  there;  or  if  it  is,  the  alien 
does  not  know  it. 

What  seems  certain  is  the  interest  with  which  every 
outward  manifestation  of  royal  and  social  state  is  fol 
lowed,  and  the  leisure  which  the  poor  have  for  a  vicari 
ous  indulgence  in  its  luxuries  and  splendors.  One 
would  say  that  there  was  a  large  leisure  class  entirely 

26 


SHOWS   AND   SIDE-SHOWS   OF   STATE 

devoted  to  these  pleasures,  which  cost  it  nothing,  but 
which  may  have  palled  on  the  taste  of  those  who  pay 
for  them.  Of  course,  something  like  this  is  the  case 
in  every  great  city;  but  in  London,  where  society  is 
enlarged  to  the  bounds  of  the  national  interests,  the 
demand  of  such  a  leisure  class  might  very  well  be  sup 
posed  to  have  created  the  supply.  Throughout  the 
London  season,  and  measurably  throughout  the  London 
year,  there  is  an  incessant  appeal  to  the  curiosity  of  the 
common  people  which  is  never  made  in  vain.  Some 
where  a  drum  is  throbbing  or  a  bugle  sounding  from 
dawn  till  dusk;  the  red  coat  is  always  passing  singly  or 
in  battalions,  afoot  or  on  horseback;  the  tall  bear-skin 
cap  weighs  upon  the  grenadier's  brow, 

"And  the  hapless  soldier's  sigh," 

if  it  does  not  "run  in  blood  down  palace  walls,"  must 
often  exhale  from  lips  tremulous  with  hushed  profanity. 
One  bright,  hot  morning  of  mid-July  the  suffering  from 
that  cruel  folly  in  the  men  of  a  regiment  marching  from 
their  barracks  to  Buckingham  Palace  and  sweltering 
under  those  shaggy  cliffs  was  evident  in  their  distorted 
eyes,  streaming  cheeks,  and  panting  mouths.  But  why 
do  I  select  the  bear-skin  cap  as  peculiarly  cruel  and 
foolish,  merely  because  it  is  archaic?  All  war  and  all 
the  images  of  it  are  cruel  and  foolish. 

The  April  morning,  however,  when  I  first  carried  out 
my  sensitized  surfaces  for  the  impression  which  I  hoped 
to  receive  from  a  certain  historic  spectacle  was  very 
different.  There  was  even  a  suggestion  of  comfort  in 
the  archaic  bear-skins;  they  were  worn,  and  they  had 
been  worn,  every  day  for  nearly  two  hundred  years,  as 
part  of  the  ceremonial  of  changing  the  regimental 

27 


LONDON   FILMS 

colors  before  Buckingham  Palace.  I  will  not  be  asked 
why  this  is  imperative;  it  has  always  been  done  and 
probably  always  will  be  done,  and  to  most  civilian  on 
lookers  will  remain  as  unintelligible  in  detail  as  it  was 
to  me.  When  the  regiment  was  drawn  up  under  the 
palace  windows,  a  part  detached  itself  from  the  main 
body  and  went  off  to  a  gate  of  the  palace,  and  continued 
mysteriously  stationary  there.  In  the  mean  time  the 
ranks  left  behind  closed  or  separated  amid  the  shouting 
of  sergeants  or  corporals,  and  the  men  relieved  them 
selves  of  the  strain  from  their  knapsacks,  or  satisfied 
an  exacting  military  ideal,  by  hopping  at  will  into  the 
air  and  bouncing  their  knapsacks,  dragging  lower 
down,  up  to  the  napes  of  their  necks,  where  they  rested 
under  the  very  fringe  of  their  bear-skin  caps.  A 
couple  of  officers,  with  swords  drawn,  walked  up  and 
down  behind  the  ranks,  but,  though  they  were  tall, 
fine  fellows,  and  expressed  in  the  nonchalant  fulfilment 
of  their  part  a  high  sense  of  boredom,  they  did  not  give 
the  scene  any  such  poignant  interest  as  it  had  from  the 
men  in  performing  a  duty,  or  indulging  a  privilege,  by 
hopping  into  the  air  and  bouncing  their  knapsacks  up 
to  their  necks.  After  what  seemed  an  unreasonable 
delay,  but  was  doubtless  requisite  for  the  transaction, 
the  detachment  sent  for  the  change  of  colors  returned 
with  the  proper  standards.  The  historic  rite  was  then 
completed,  the  troops  formed  in  order,  and  marched 
back  to  their  barracks  to  the  exultant  strains  of  their 
band. 

The  crowd  outside  the  palace  yard,  which  this  daily 
sight  attracts,  dispersed  reluctantly,  its  particles  doubt 
less  holding  themselves  ready  to  reassemble  at  the 
slightest  notice.  It  formed  a  small  portion  only  of  the 
population  of  London  which  has  volunteer  charge  of 

28 


SHOWS   AND    SIDE-SHOWS   OF   STATE 

the  goings  and  comings  at  Buckingham  Palace.  Cer 
tain  of  its  members  are  on  guard  there  from  morning 
till  night,  and  probably  no  detail  of  ceremony  escapes 
their  vigilance.  If  asked  what  they  are  expecting  to 
see,  they  are  not  able  to  say;  they  only  know  that  they 
are  there  to  see  what  happens.  They  make  the  most 
of  any  carriage  entering  or  issuing  from  the  yard;  they 
note  the  rare  civilians  who  leave  or  approach  the  palace 
door  on  foot,  the  half-dozen  plain  policemen  who  stand 
at  their  appointed  places  within  the  barrier  which  none 
of  the  crowd  ever  dreams  of  passing  must  share  its  in 
terest.  Neither  these  policemen  nor  the  sentries  who 
pace  their  beat  before  the  high  iron  fence  are  ap 
parently  willing  to  molest  the  representatives  of  the 
public  interest.  On  the  April  morning  in  case,  during 
the  momentary  absence  of  the  policeman  who  should 
have  restrained  the  crowd,  the  sentry  found  himself 
embarrassed  by  a  spectator  who  had  intruded  on  his 
beat.  He  faltered,  blushing  as  well  as  he  could  through 
his  high  English  color,  and  then  said,  gently,  "A  little 
back,  please,"  and  the  intruder  begged  pardon  and 
retired. 

In  the  simple  incident  there  was  nothing  of  the  ner 
vousness  observable  in  either  the  official  or  the  offi 
cious  repositories  of  the  nationality  which  one  sees  in 
Continental  countries,  and  especially  in  Germany.  It 
was  plain  that  England,  though  a  military  power,  is 
not  militarized.  The  English  shows  of  force  are  civil. 
Nowhere  but  in  England  does  the  European  hand  of  iron 
wear  the  glove  of  velvet.  There  is  always  an  English 
war  going  on  somewhere,  but  one  does  not  relate  to  it 
the  kindly-looking  young  fellows  whom  one  sees  suffer 
ing  under  their  bear-skin  caps  in  the  ranks,  or  loitering  at 
liberty  in  the  parks,  and  courting  the  flattered  girls 

29 


LONDON   FILMS 

who  flutter  like  moths  about  the  flame  of  their  red 
jackets,  up  and  down  the  paths  and  on  the  public 
benches.  The  soldiers  are  under  the  law  of  military 
obedience,  and  are  so  far  in  slavery,  as  all  soldiers  are, 
but  nothing  of  their  slavery  is  visible,  and  they  are  the 
idols  of  an  unstinted  devotion,  which  adds  to  the  pict- 
uresqueness  and,  no  doubt,  the  pathos  of  the  great 
London  spectacle.  It  is  said  that  they  sometimes 
abuse  their  apparent  supremacy,  and  that  their  uniform 
generally  bars  them  from  places  of  amusement ;  but  one 
sees  nothing  of  their  insubordination  or  exclusion  in  the 
public  ways,  where  one  sometimes  sees  them  pushing 
baby-carriages  to  free  the  nurse-maids  to  more  unre 
stricted  flirtation,  or  straying  over  the  grass  and  under 
the  trees  with  maids  who  are  not  burdened  by  any 
sort  of  present  duty. 

After  all,  as  compared  with  the  civilians,  they  are 
few  even  in  that  game  of  love  which  is  always  playing 
itself  wherever  youth  meets  youth,  and  which  in  London 
is  only  evident  in  proportion  to  the  vastness  of  the 
city.  Their  individual  life  is,  like  that  of  the  royalty 
which  they  decorate,  public  more  than  private,  and  one 
can  scarcely  dissociate  them,  with  all  their  personal 
humility,  from  the  exalted  figures  whose  eminence 
they  directly  or  indirectly  contribute  to  throw  into 
relief.  I  do  not  mean  that  they  are  seen  much  or  little 
in  the  king's  company.  The  English  king,  though  he 
wears  many  land  and  sea  uniforms,  is  essentially  civilian, 
and  though  vast  numbers  of  soldiers  exist  for  his  state 
in  London,  they  do  not  obviously  attend  him,  except 
on  occasions  of  the  very  highest  state.  I  make  this 
observation  rather  hazardously,  for  the  fact,  which  I 
feel  bound  to  share  with  the  reader,  is  that  I  never  saw 
in  London  any  of  the  royalties  who  so  abound  there. 

30 


SHOWS   AND    SIDE-SHOWS   OF   STATE 

I  did,  indeed,  see  the  king  before  I  left  England,  but  it 
was  in  a  place  far  from  his  capital,  and  the  king  was  the 
only  one  of  his  large  family  I  saw  anywhere.  I  hope 
this  will  not  greatly  disappoint  my  readers,  especially 
such  as  have  scruples  against  royalties;  but  it  is  best 
to  be  honest.  I  can  be  quite  as  honest  in  adding  that 
I  had  always  a  vague,  underlying  curiosity  concerning 
royalty,  and  a  hope  that  it  would  somehow  come  my 
way,  but  it  never  did,  to  my  knowledge,  and  somehow, 
with  the  best  will  towards  it,  I  never  went  its  way. 
This  I  now  think  rather  stupid,  for  every  day  the  morn 
ing  papers  predicted  the  movements  of  royalty,  which 
seemed  to  be  in  perpetual  movement,  so  that  it  must 
have  been  by  chance  that  I  never  saw  it  arriving  or 
departing  at  the  stations  where  I  was  often  doing  the 
same. 

Of  course,  no  private  person,  not  even  the  greatest 
nobleman,  let  alone  the  passing  stranger,  can  possibly 
arrive  and  depart  so  much  as  the  king  and  queen,  and 
their  many  children,  grandchildren,  nephews,  and 
nieces,  and  cousins  of  every  remove.  For  the  sover 
eigns  themselves  this  incessant  motion,  though  mitigated 
by  every  device  of  loyal  affection  and  devotion  on  the 
part  of  their  subjects,  must  be  a  great  hardship,  and 
greater  as  they  get  into  years.  The  king's  formal 
office  is  simply  to  reign,  but  one  wonders  when  he  finds 
the  time  for  reigning.  He  seems  to  be  always  setting 
out  for  Germany  or  Denmark  or  France,  when  he  is  not 
coming  from  Wales  or  Scotland  or  Ireland;  and,  when 
quietly  at  home  in  England,  he  is  constantly  away 
on  visits  to  the  houses  of  favored  subjects,  shooting 
pheasants  or  grouse  or  deer;  or  he  is  going  from  one 
horse-race  to  another  or  to  some  yacht-race  or  garden- 
party  or  whatever  corresponds  in  England  to  a  church 

31 


LONDON    FILMS 

sociable.  It  is  impossible  to  enumerate  the  pleasures 
which  must  poison  his  life,  as  if  the  cares  were  not 
enough.  In  the  case  of  the  present  king,  who  is  so  much 
liked  and  is  so  amiable  and  active,  the  perpetual  move 
ment  affects  the  plebeian  foreigner  as  something  terri 
ble.  Never  to  be  quiet;  never  to  have  a  stretch  of  those 
long  days  and  weeks  of  unbroken  continuity  dear  to 
later  life;  ever  to  sit  at  strange  tables  and  sample 
strange  cookeries;  to  sleep  under  a  different  preacher 
every  Sunday,  and  in  a  different  bed  every  night;  to 
wear  all  sorts  of  uniforms  for  all  sorts  of  occasions, 
three  or  four  times  a  day;  to  receive  every  manner  of 
deputation,  and  try  to  show  an  interest  in  every  manner 
of  object — who  would  reign  on  such  terms  as  these,  if 
there  were  any  choice  of  not  reigning? 

Evidently  such  a  career  cannot  be  managed  without 
the  help,  the  pretty  constant  help,  of  armed  men;  and 
the  movement  of  troops  in  London  from  one  point  to 
another  is  one  of  the  evidences  of  state  which  is  so 
little  static,  so  largely  dynamic.  It  is  a  pretty  sight, 
and  makes  one  wish  one  were  a  child  that  one  might 
fully  enjoy  it,  whether  it  is  the  movement  of  a  great 
mass  of  blood-red  backs  of  men,  or  here  and  there  a 
flaming  squad,  or  a  single  vidette  spurring  on  some 
swift  errand,  with  his  pennoned  lance  erect  from  his 
toe  and  his  horse-hair  crest  streaming  behind  him.  The 
soldiers  always  lend  a  brilliancy  to  the  dull  hue  of  civil 
life,  and  there  is  a  never-failing  sensation  in  the  spec 
tator  as  they  pass  afar  or  near.  Of  course,  the  supreme 
attraction  in  their  sort  for  the  newly  arrived  American 
is  the  pair  of  statuesque  warriors  who  motionlessly  sit 
their  motionless  steeds  at  the  gates  of  the  Horse-Guards, 
and  express  an  archaic  uselessness  as  perfectly  as  if  they 
were  Highlanders  taking  snuff  before  a  tobacconist's 

32 


SHOWS   AND    SIDE-SHOWS    OF   STATE 

shop.  When  I  first  arrived  in  London  in  the  earliest 
of  those  sad  eighteen-sixties  when  our  English  brethren 
were  equipping  our  Confederate  brethren  to  sweep  our 
commerce  from  the  seas,  I  think  I  must  have  gone  to 
see  those  images  at  the  Horse-Guards  even  before  I 
visited  the  monuments  in  Westminster  Abbey,  and  they 
then  perfectly  filled  my  vast  expectation;  they  might 
have  been  Gog  and  Magog,  for  their  gigantic  stature. 
In  after  visits,  though  I  had  a  sneaking  desire  to  see 
them  again,  I  somehow  could  not  find  their  place, 
being  ashamed  to  ask  for  it,  in  my  hope  of  happening 
on  it,  and  I  had  formed  the  notion,  which  I  confidently 
urged,  that  they  had  been  taken  down,  like  the  Welling 
ton  statue  from  the  arch.  But  the  other  day  (or  month, 
rather),  when  I  was  looking  for  Whitehall,  suddenly 
there  they  were  again,  sitting  their  horses  in  the  gate 
ways  as  of  yore,  and  as  woodenly  as  if  they  had  never 
stirred  since  1861.  They  were  unchanged  in  attitude, 
but  how  changed  they  were  in  person:  so  dwarfed,  so 
shrunken,  as  if  the  intervening  years  had  sapped  the 
juices  of  their  joints  and  let  their  bones  fall  together, 
like  those  of  withered  old  men! 

This  was,  of  course,  the  unjust  effect  of  my  original 
exaggeration  of  their  length  and  breadth.  The  troops 
that  I  saw  marching  through  the  streets  where  we  first 
lodged  were  fine,  large  men.  I  myself  saw  no  choice 
in  the  different  bodies,  but  the  little  housemaid  much 
preferred  the  grenadier  guards  to  the  Scotch  guards; 
perhaps  there  was  one  grenadier  guard  who  lent  beauty 
and  grandeur  to  the  rest.  I  think  Scotch  caps  are  much 
gayer  than  those  busbies  which  the  grenadiers  wear, 
but  that,  again,  is  a  matter  of  taste;  I  certainly  did 
not  think  the  plaid  pantaloons  with  which  the  Scotch 
guards  hid  the  knees  that  ought  to  have  been  naked 

33 


LONDON    FILMS 

were  as  good  as  the  plain  trousers  of  their  rivals.  But 
they  were  all  well  enough,  and  the  officers  who  saun 
tered  along  out  of  step  on  the  sidewalk,  or  stoop-shoul- 
deredly,  as  the  English  military  fashion  now  is,  followed 
the  troops  on  horseback,  were  splendid  fellows,  who 
would  go  to  battle  as  simply  as  to  afternoon  tea,  and 
get  themselves  shot  in  some  imperial  cause  as  imper 
sonally  as  their  men. 

There  were  large  barracks  in  our  neighborhood  where 
one  might  have  glimpses  of  the  intimate  life  of  the 
troops,  such  as  shirt-sleeved  figures  smoking  short  pipes 
at  the  windows,  or  red  coats  hanging  from  the  sills,  or 
sometimes  a  stately  bear-skin  dangling  from  a  shutter 
by  its  throat-latch.  We  were  also  near  to  the  Chelsea 
Hospital,  where  soldiering  had  come  to  its  last  word  in 
the  old  pensioners  pottering  about  the  garden-paths  or 
sitting  in  the  shade  or  sun.  Wherever  a  red  coat  ap 
peared  it  had  its  honorable  obsequy  in  the  popular  in 
terest,  and  if  I  might  venture  to  sum  up  my  impres 
sion  of  what  I  saw  of  soldiering  in  London  I  should 
say  that  it  keeps  its  romance  for  the  spectator  far  more 
than  soldiering  does  in  the  Continental  capitals,  where 
it  seems  a  slavery  consciously  sad  and  clearly  discerned. 
It  may  be  that  a  glamour  clings  to  the  English  soldier  be 
cause  he  has  voluntarily  enslaved  himself  as  a  recruit, 
and  has  not  been  torn  an  unwilling  captive  from  his 
home  and  work,  like  the  conscripts  of  other  countries. 
On  the  same  terms  our  own  military  are  romantic. 


IV 

THE  DUN  YEAR'S  BRILLIANT   FLOWER 

I  HAD  thought — rather  cheaply,  as  I  now  realize — of 
offering,  as  a  pendant  for  the  scene  of  Fashion  Meet 
ing  Itself  in  the  Park  on  the  Sunday  noons  and  after 
noons  which  I  have  tried  to  photograph,  some  picture  of 
open-air  life  in  the  slums.  But  upon  reflection  I  have 
decided  that  the  true  counterpart  of  that  scene  is  to  be 
found  any  week-day  evening,  when  the  weather  is  fair, 
on  the  grassy  stretches  which  the  Park  rises  into  some 
what  beyond  the  sacred  close  of  high  life.  This  space 
is  also  enclosed,  but  the  iron  fence  which  bounds  it  is 
higher  and  firmer,  and  there  is  nothing  of  such  seclusion 
as  embowering  foliage  gives.  There  are  no  trees  on 
any  side  for  many  acres,  and  the  golden-red  sunset 
glow  hovers  with  an  Indian-summer  mellowness  in  the 
low  English  heaven;  or  at  least  it  did  so  at  the  end  of 
one  sultry  day  which  I  have  in  mind.  From  all  the 
paths  leading  up  out  of  Piccadilly  there  was  a  streaming 
tendency  to  the  pleasant  level,  thickly  and  softly  turfed, 
and  already  strewn  with  sitting  and  reclining  shapes 
which  a  more  impassioned  imagination  than  mine 
might  figure  as  the  dead  and  wounded  in  some  field 
of  the  incessant  struggle  of  life.  But,  besides  having 
no  use  for  such  a  figure,  I  am  withheld  from  it  by  a 
conscience  against  its  unreality.  Those  people,  mostly 
young  people,  are  either  sitting  there  in  gossiping  groups, 

35 


LONDON    FILMS 

or  whispering  pairs,  or  singly  breathing  a  mute  rapture 
of  release  from  the  day's  work.  A  young  fellow  lies 
stretched  upon  his  stomach,  propped  by  his  elbows  above 
the  newspaper  which  the  lingering  light  allows  him  to 
read;  another  has  an  open  book  under  his  eyes;  but 
commonly  each  has  the  companionship  of  some  fearless 
girl  in  the  abandonment  of  the  conventionalities  which 
with  us  is  a  convention  of  summer  ease  on  the  sands 
beside  the  sea,  but  which  is  here  without  that  extreme 
effect  which  the  bathing-costume  imparts  on  our  beaches. 
These  young  people  stretched  side  by  side  on  the  grass 
in  Hyde  Park  added  a  pastoral  charm  to  the  scene,  a 
suggestion  of  the 

"  Bella  eta,  dell'  oro  " 

not  to  be  had  elsewhere  in  our  iron  civilization.  One 
might  accuse  their  taste,  but  certainly  they  were  more 
interesting  than  the  rows  of  young  men  perched  on  the 
top  course  of  the  fence,  in  a  wide  variety  of  straw  hats, 
or  even  than  the  red-coated  soldiers  who  boldly  occupied 
the  penny  chairs  along  the  walks  and  enjoyed  each  the 
vigorous  rivalry  of  girls  worshipping  him  on  either  hand. 
They  boldly  occupied  the  penny  chairs,  for  the 
danger  that  they  would  be  made  to  pay  was  small. 
The  sole  collector,  a  man  well  in  years  and  of  a  benevo 
lent  reluctance,  passed  casually  among  the  rows  of 
seats,  and  took  pennies  only  from  those  who  could  most 
clearly  afford  it.  There  was  a  fence  round  a  pavilion 
where  a  band  was  playing,  and  within  there  were  spend 
thrifts  who  paid  fourpence  for  their  chairs,  when  the 
music  could  be  perfectly  well  heard  without  charge  out 
side.  It  was,  in  fact,  heard  there  by  a  large  audience 
of  bicyclers  of  both  sexes,  who  stood  by  their  wheels  in 
numbers  unknown  in  New  York  since  the  fad  of  bicy- 


THE   DUN    YEAR'S   BRILLIANT   FLOWER 

cling  began  to  pass  several  years  ago.  The  lamps  shed 
a  pleasant  light  upon  the  crowd,  after  the  long  after 
glow  of  the  sunset  had  passed  and  the  first  stars  began 
to  pierce  the  clear  heavens.  But  there  was  always 
enough  kindly  obscurity  to  hide  emotions  that  did  not 
mind  being  seen,  and  to  soften  the  details  which  could 
not  be  called  beautiful.  As  the  dark  deepened,  the 
prone  shapes  scattered  by  hundreds  over  the  grass  looked 
like  peaceful  flocks  whose  repose  was  not  disturbed  by 
the  human  voices  or  by  the  human  feet  that  incessantly 
went  and  came  on  the  paths.  It  was  a  touch,  however 
illusory,  of  the  rusticity  which  lingers  in  so  many  sorts 
at  the  heart  of  the  immense  city,  and  renders  it  at  un 
expected  moments  simple  and  homelike  above  all  other 
cities. 

The  evening  when  this  London  pastoral  offered  itself 
was  the  close  of  a  day  of  almost  American  heat.  The 
mercury  never  went  above  eighty-three  degrees,  but 
the  blood  mounted  ten  degrees  higher;  though  I  think 
a  good  deal  of  the  heat  imparted  itself  through  the  eye 
from  the  lurid  horizons  paling  upward  into  the  dull, 
unbroken  blue  of  the  heavens,  ordinarily  overcast  or 
heaped  with  masses  of  white  cloud.  A  good  deal  came 
also  from  the  thronged  streets,  in  which  the  season  had 
scarcely  begun  to  waver,  and  the  pulses  of  the  plethoric 
town  throbbed  with  a  sense  of  choking  fulness.  The 
feverish  activity  of  the  cabs  contributed  to  the  effect  of 
the  currents  and  counter-currents,  as  they  insinuated 
themselves  into  every  crevice  of  the  frequent  "blocks," 
where  the  populations  of  the  bus-tops,  deprived  in  their 
arrest  of  the  artificial  movement  of  air,  sweltered  in  the 
sun,  and  the  classes  in  private  carriages  of  every  order 
and  degree  suffered  in  a  helpless  equality  with  the  per 
spiring  masses. 

37 


LONDON    FILMS 

Suddenly  all  London  had  burst  into  a  passion  of 
straw  hats;  and  where  one  lately  saw  only  the  variance 
from  silken  cylinders  to  the  different  types  of  derbies 
and  fedoras,  there  was  now  the  glisten  of  every  shape  of 
panama,  tuscan,  and  chip  head-gear,  with  a  prevalence 
of  the  low,  flat  -  topped  hard  -  brimmed  things  that 
mocked  with  the  rigidity  of  sheet-iron  the  conception 
of  straw  as  a  light  and  yielding  material.  Men  with  as 
yet  only  one  foot  in  the  grave  can  easily  remember 
when  the  American  picked  himself  out  in  the  London 
crowd  by  his  summer  hat,  but  now,  in  his  belated  con 
formity  to  an  extinct  ideal,  his  head  is  apt  to  be  one  of 
the  few  cylindered  or  derbied  heads  in  the  swarming 
processions  of  Piccadilly  or  the  paths  in  the  Park.  No 
shape  of  straw  hat  is  peculiar  to  any  class,  but  the 
slouching  panama  is  for  pecuniary  reasons  more  the 
wear  of  rank  and  wealth.  With  a  brim  flared  up  in 
front  and  scooped  down  behind,  it  justifies  its  greater 
acceptance  with  youth;  age  and  middle -age  wear  its 
weave  and  the  tuscan  braid  in  the  fedora  form ;  and  now 
and  then  one  saw  the  venerable  convention  of  the  cock- 
aded  footman's  and  coachman's  silk  hat  mocked  in 
straw.  No  concession  more  extreme  could  be  made  to 
the  heat,  and  these  strange  cylinders,  together  with  the 
linen  liveries  which  accompanied  them,  accented  the 
excesses  in  which  the  English  are  apt  to  indulge  their 
common -sense  when  they  decide  to  give  way  to  it. 
They  have  apparently  decided  to  give  way  to  it  in 
the  dress  of  both  sexes  on  the  bridle-paths  of  the  Park, 
where  individual  caprice  is  the  sole  law  that  obtains 
amid  a  general  anarchy. 

The  effect,  upon  the  whole,  is  exhilarating,  and  sug 
gests  the  daring  thought  that,  if  ever  their  race  decides 
to  get  on  without  government  of  any  sort,  they  will  rid 

38 


THE   DUN   YEAR'S    BRILLIANT   FLOWER 

themselves  of  it  with  a  thoroughness  and  swiftness  past 
the  energy  of  dynamite,  and  cast  church  and  state,  with 
all  their  dignities,  to  the  winds  as  lightly  as  they  have 
discarded  the  traditional  costumes  of  Rotten  Row. 
The  young  girls  and  young  men  in  flapping  panamas, 
in  tunics  and  jackets  of  every  kind  and  color,  gave  cer 
tainly  an  agreeable  liveliness  to  the  spectacle,  which 
their  elders  emulated  by  expressions  of  taste  as  person 
al  and  unconventional.  A  lady  in  the  old-fashioned 
riding-habit  and  a  black  top-hat  with  a  floating  veil 
recalled  a  former  day,  but  she  was  obviously  riding  to 
lose  weight,  in  a  brief  emergence  from  the  past  to  which 
she  belonged.  One  man  similarly  hatted,  but  frock- 
coated  and  not  veiled,  is  scarcely  worthy  of  note;  but 
no  doubt  he  was  gratifying  an  individual  preference  as 
distinct  as  that  of  the  rest.  He  did  not  contribute  so 
much  to  the  sense  of  liberation  from  the  heat  as  the 
others  who,  when  it  reached  its  height,  frankly  confessed 
its  power  by  riding  in  greatly  diminished  numbers.  By 
twelve  o'clock  scarcely  one  left  of  all  those  joyous 
youths,  those  jolly  sires  and  grandsires,  those  happy 
children,  matched  in  size  with  their  ponies,  as  the  elders 
were  in  their  different  mounts,  remains  to  distract  the 
eye  from  the  occupants  of  the  two  rows  of  penny  chairs 
and  the  promenaders  between  them. 

It  was  a  less  formidable  but  possibly  more  interesting 
show  of  what  seemed  society  at  home  than  the  Sunday- 
afternoon  reception  in  the  consecrated  closes  on  the 
grass.  People  who  knew  one  another  stopped  and 
gossiped,  and  people  who  knew  nobody  passed  on  and 
tried  to  ignore  them.  But  that  could  not  have  been 
easy.  The  women  whom  those  handsome,  aristocratic 
men  bowed  over,  or  dropped  into  chairs  beside,  or 
saluted  as  they  went  by,  were  very  beautiful  women, 


LONDON    FILMS 

and  dressed  with  that  sentiment  which  has  already  been 
celebrated.  Their  draperies  fluttered  in  the  gay  breeze 
which  vied  with  the  brilliant  sun  in  dappling  them  with 
tremulous  leaf-shadows,  and  in  making  them  the  life 
of  a  picture  to  be  seen  nowhere  else.  It  was  not  neces 
sary  to  know  just  who,  or  just  of  what  quality  they 
were,  in  order  to  realize  their  loveliness. 

Behind  the  walks  and  under  the  trees  the  grass  had 
still  something  of  its  early  summer  freshness;  but  in  its 
farther  stretches  it  was  of  our  August  brown,  and  in 
certain  spaces  looked  burned  to  the  roots.  The  trees 
themselves  had  begun  to  relax  their  earlier  vigor,  and 
the  wind  blew  showers  of  yellowing  leaves  from  their 
drooping  boughs.  Towards  the  close  of  the  season,  on 
the  withered  grass,  quite  in  the  vicinity  of  those  conse 
crated  social  closes,  to  which  I  am  always  returning 
with  a  snobbish  fondness,  I  saw  signs  of  the  advance 
of  the  great  weary  army  which  would  possess  the  pleas 
ure-grounds  of  the  town  when  the  pleasurers  had  left  it. 
Already  the  dead-tired,  or  possibly  the  dead-drunk,  had 
cast  themselves,  as  if  they  had  been  shot  down  there, 
with  their  faces  in  the  lifeless  grass,  and  lay  in  greasy 
heaps  and  coils  where  the  delicate  foot  of  fashion  had 
pressed  the  green  herbage.  As  among  the  spectators 
I  thought  I  noted  an  increasing  number  of  my  country 
men  and  women,  so  in  the  passing  vehicles  I  fancied 
more  and  more  of  them  in  the  hired  turnouts  which 
cannot  long  keep  their  secret  from  the  critical  eye. 
These  were  as  obvious  to  conjecture  as  some  other 
turnouts,  which  I  fancied  of  a  decayed  ancestrality : 
cumbrous  landaus  and  victorias,  with  rubberless  tires, 
which  grumbled  and  grieved  in  their  course  for  the 
passati  tempi,  and  expressed  a  rheumatic  scorn  for  the 
parvenu  carriages,  and  for  all  the  types  of  motors  which 

40 


THE   DUN   YEAR'S   BRILLIANT   FLOWER 

more  and  more  invade  the  drives  of  the  Park.  They 
had  a  literary  quality,  and  were  out  of  Thackeray  and 
Trollope,  in  the  dearth  of  any  modern  society  novelists 
great  enough  for  them  to  be  out  of. 

If  such  novelists  had  not  been  wanting  I  am  sure  I 
should  not  be  left  with  the  problem  of  an  extremely 
pretty  and  charming  woman  whose  scarf  one  morning 
so  much  engaged  the  eye  of  the  gentleman  sitting  beside 
another  extremely  pretty  and  charming  woman,  that 
he  left  her  and  came  and  sat  down  by  the  new-comer, 
who  let  him  play  with  the  fringe  of  her  scarf.  Was  she 
in  a  manner  playing  him  with  it?  A  thoroughly 
equipped  society  fiction,  such  as  the  English  now  lack, 
would  have  instructed  me,  and  taught  me  the  mystic 
meaning  of  the  young  girls  who  fluttered  up  and  down 
the  paths  by  twos  and  threes,  exquisite  complexions,  ex 
quisite  shapes,  exquisite  profiles,  exquisite  costumes,  in 
a  glad  momentary  freedom  from  chaperonage.  It  would 
fix  even  the  exact  social  value  of  that  companion  of  a 
lady  stopped  in  chat  by  that  other  lady,  who  was  always 
hopping  up  and  stopping  people  of  her  acquaintance. 
The  companion  was  not  of  her  acquaintance,  nor  was 
she  now  made  of  it;  she  stood  statue-still  and  sphinx- 
patient  in  the  walk,  and  only  an  eye  ever  avid  of  story 
could  be  aware  of  the  impassioned  tapping  of  the  little 
foot  whose  mute  drama  faintly  agitated  the  hem  of  her 
drapery.  Was  she  poor  and  proud,  or  was  she  rich  and 
scornful  in  her  relation  to  the  encounter  from  which 
she  remained  excluded?  The  lady  who  had  left  her 
standing  rejoined  her  and  they  drifted  off  together 
into  the  vast  of  the  unfathomed,  but  not,  I  like  to 
believe,  the  unfathomable. 

When  the  heat  broke  at  last,  after  a  fortnight,  of  course 
it  did  not  break.  That  would  have  been  a  violence  of 

41 


LONDON    FILMS 

which  English  weather  would  not  have  been  capable. 
There  was  no  abrupt  drop  of  the  mercury,  as  if  a  trap 
were  sprung  under  it,  after  the  fashion  with  us.  It 
softly  gave  way  in  a  gradual,  delicious  coolness,  which 
again  mellowed  at  the  edges,  as  it  were,  and  dissolved 
in  a  gentle,  tentative  rain.  But  how  far  the  rain  might 
finally  go,  we  did  not  stay  to  see:  we  had  fled  from  the 
"anguish  of  the  solstice,"  as  we  had  felt  it  in  London, 
and  by  the  time  the  first  shower  insinuated  itself  we 
were  in  the  heart  of  the  Malvern  Hills. 

Of  course,  this  heated  term  was  not  as  the  heated 
terms  of  New  York  are ;  but  it  excelled  them  in  length, 
if  not  in  breadth  and  thickness.  The  nights  were  al 
ways  cool,  and  that  was  a  saving  grace  which  our  nights 
do  not  know;  with  nights  like  ours  so  long  a  heat  would 
havo  been  unendurable,  but  in  London  one  woke  each 
morning  with  renewed  hope  and  renewed  strength. 
Very  likely  there  were  parts  of  London  where  people 
despaired  and  weakened  through  the  night,  but  in  these 
polite  perspectives  I  am  trying  to  exclude  such  places; 
and  whenever  I  say  "one"  in  this  relation,  I  am  imagin 
ing  one  of  the  many  Americans  who  witness  the  London 
season  perhaps  oftener  from  the  outside  than  the  inside, 
but  who  still  can  appreciate  and  revere  its  facts. 

The  season  was  said  to  begin  very  late,  and  it  was 
said  to  be  a  very  "bad"  season,  throughout  May,  when 
the  charges  of  those  who  live  by  it  ordinarily  feel  an 
expansive  rise;  when  rooms  at  hotels  become  difficult, 
become  impossible;  when  the  rents  of  apartments 
double  themselves,  and  apartments  are  often  not  to  be 
had  at  any  price;  when  the  face  of  the  cabman  clouds 
if  you  say  you  want  him  by  the  hour,  and  clears  if  you 
add  that  you  will  make  it  all  right  with  him;  when 
every  form  of  service  begins  to  have  the  courage  of  its 

42 


THE    DUN   YEAR'S    BRILLIANT    FLOWER 

dependence;  and  the  manifold  fees  which  ease  the 
social  machine  seem  to  lubricate  it  so  much  less  than 
the  same  fees  in  April;  when  the  whole  vast  body  of 
London  groans  with  a  sense  of  repletion  such  as  no 
American  city  knows  except  in  the  rare  congestion  pro 
duced  by  a  universal  exposition  or  a  national  conven 
tion.  Such  a  congestion  is  of  annual  occurrence  in 
London,  and  is  the  symptomatic  expression  of  the  sea 
son;  but  the  symptoms  ordinarily  recognizable  in  May 
were  absent  until  June  in  the  actual  year.  They  were 
said  to  have  been  suppressed  by  the  reluctance  of  the 
tardy  spring,  and  again  by  the  king's  visit  to  Ireland. 
As  the  king  is  the  fountain  of  social  prosperity  it  is 
probable  that  he  had  more  to  do  with  delaying  the  sea 
son  than  the  weather  had;  but  by  what  one  hears  said 
of  him  he  would  not  have  willingly  delayed  it.  He  is 
not  only  a  well-meaning  and  well-doing  prince,  one 
hears  from  people  of  every  opinion,  but  a  promoter  of 
peace  and  international  concord  (especially  with  France, 
where  his  good  offices  are  believed  to  have  been  pe 
culiarly  effective),  and  he  is,  rather  more  expectedly, 
a  cheerful  sovereign,  loving  the  gayety  as  well  as  the 
splendor  of  state,  and  fond  of  seeing  the  world  enjoy 
itself. 

It  is  no  betrayal  of  the  national  confidence  to  repeat 
what  every  one  says  concerning  the  present  outburst 
of  fashion,  that  it  is  a  glad  compliance  with  the  king's 
liking;  the  more  eager  because  of  its  long  suppression 
during  the  late  queen's  reign  and  the  more  anxious 
because  of  a  pathetic  apprehension  inspired  by  the  well- 
known  serious  temperament  of  the  heir-apparent  to 
the  throne.  No  doubt  the  joyful  rebound  from  the 
depression  of  the  Boer  war  is  also  still  felt;  but  for 
whatever  reason  London  life  is  gay  and  glad,  it  is  cer- 

43 


LONDON   FILMS 

tainly  making  its  hay  while  the  sun  shines,  and  it  mixes 
as  many  poppies  and  daisies  with  the  crop  as  possible 
against  the  time  when  only  grass  may  be  acceptable.  In 
other  terms  the  prevailing  passion  for  pretty  clothes  in 
the  masses  as  well  as  the  classes  is  the  inspiration  of  the 
court,  while  the  free  personal  preferences  expressed  are 
probably  the  effect  of  that  strong,  that  headstrong,  in 
stinct  of  being  like  one's  self,  whether  one  is  like  others 
or  not,  which  has  always  moulded  precedence  and  tra 
dition  to  individual  convenience  with  the  English. 
One  would  not  have  said  that  a  frock-coat  of  lustrous 
black  alpaca  was  just  the  wear  for  a  tall  middle-aged 
gentleman  in  a  silk  hat  and  other  scrupulous  appoint 
ments;  but  when  he  appeared  in  it  one  hottest  Sunday 
afternoon  in  that  consecrated  close  of  Hyde  Park,  and 
was  welcomed  by  the  inmost  flower-group  of  the  gor 
geous  parterre,  one  had  to  own  a  force  of  logic  in 
it.  If  a  frock-coat  was  the  proper  thing  for  the  occa 
sion  in  general,  then  the  lightest  and  coolest  fabric 
was  the  thing  for  that  occasion  in  particular.  So  the 
wearer  had  reasoned  in  sublime  self-reliance,  and 
so,  probably,  the  others  reasoned  in  intelligent  acqui 
escence. 

Just  what  quality  he  had  the  courage  of  one  could 
not  have  guessed  at  a  distance,  and  he  must  remain 
part  of  the  immense  question  which  London  continues 
for  the  inquirer  to  the  last;  but  it  is  safe  to  say  that  he 
looked  distinguished.  Out  of  season,  the  London  type 
of  man  looked  undistinguished,  but  when  the  season 
began  to  make  London  over,  the  pavement  of  Piccadilly 
sprouted  in  a  race  of  giants  who  were  as  trees  walking. 
They  were  mostly  young  giants,  who  had  great  beauty 
of  complexion,  of  course,  and  as  great  beauty  of  feature. 
.  They  were  doubtless  the  result  of  a  natural  selection,  to 

44 


THE   DUN    YEAR'S   BRILLIANT    FLOWER 

which  money  for  buying  perfect  conditions  had  con 
tributed  as  much  as  the  time  necessary  for  growing  a 
type.  Mostly  their  faces  were  gentle  and  kind,  and  only 
now  and  then  hard  or  cruel;  but  one  need  not  be  espe 
cially  averse  to  the  English  classification  of  our  species 
to  feel  that  they  had  cost  more  than  they  were  worth. 
The  very  handsomest  man  I  saw,  with  the  most  per 
fectly  patrician  profile  (if  we  imagine  something  delicate 
ly  aquiline  to  be  particularly  patrician),  was  a  groom 
who  sat  his  horse  beside  Rotten  Row,  waiting  till  his 
master  should  come  to  command  the  services  of  both. 
He  too  had  the  look  of  long  descent,  but  if  it  could  not 
be  said  that  he  had  cost  the  nation  too  much  time  and 
money,  it  might  still  be  conjectured  that  he  had  cost 
some  one  too  much  of  something  better. 

Next  after  these  beautiful  people  I  think  that  in  the 
multitudinously  varied  crowd  of  London  I  saw  no  men 
so  splendidly,  so  brilliantly,  so  lustrously  handsome  as 
three  of  those  imperial  British  whose  lives  are  safer, 
but  whose  social  status  is  scarcely  better  than  that  of  our 
negroes.  They  were  three  tall  young  Hindoos,  in  native 
dress,  and  white-turbaned  to  their  swarthy  foreheads,  who 
suddenly  filed  out  of  the  crowd,  looking  more  mystery 
from  their  liquid  eyes  than  they  could  well  have  cor 
roborated  in  word  or  thought,  and  bringing  to  the 
metropolis  of  the  West  the  gorgeous  and  foolish  mag 
nificence  of  the  sensuous  East.  What  did  they  make 
of  the  metropolis?  Were  they  conscious,  with  or  with 
out  rebellion,  of  their  subjection,  their  absolute  inferi 
ority  in  the  imperial  scheme?  If  looks  went  for  what 
looks  rarely  do,  except  in  women,  they  should  have 
been  the  lords  of  those  they  met;  but  as  it  was  they  were 
simply  the  representatives  of  one  of  the  suppressed  races 
which,  if  they  joined  hands,  could  girdle  the  globe  under 

45 


LONDON    FILMS 

British  rule.  Somehow  they  brought  the  sense  of  this 
home  to  the  beholder,  as  none  of  the  monuments  or 
memorials  of  England's  imperial  glory  had  done,  and 
then,  having  fulfilled  their  office,  lost  themselves  in  the 
crowd. 


THE  SIGHTS  AND   SOUNDS   OF  THE  STREETS 

THE  specialization  of  those  fatuous  Orientals,  tran 
sient  as  it  was,  was  of  far  greater  duration  than 
that  of  most  individual  impressions  from  the  London 
crowd.  London  is  a  flood  of  life,  from  which  in  a  power 
ful  light  you  may  catch  the  shimmering  facet  of  a  specific 
wavelet ;  but  these  fleeting  glimpses  leave  only  a  blurred 
record  with  the  most  instantaneous  apparatus.  What 
remains  of  the  vision  of  that  long  succession  of  streets 
called  by  successive  names  from  Knightsbridge  to  Lud- 
gate  Hill  is  the  rush  of  a  human  torrent,  in  which  you 
are  scarcely  more  aware  of  the  single  life  than  of  any 
given  ripple  in  a  river.  Men,  women,  children  form 
the  torrent,  but  each  has  been  lost  to  himself  in  order 
to  give  it  the  collective  immensity  which  abides  in  your 
mind's  eye. 

To  the  American  city-dweller  the  London  omnibus  is 
archaic.  Except  for  the  few  slow  stages  that  lumber 
up  and  down  Fifth  Avenue,  we  have  hardly  anything  of 
the  omnibus  kind  in  the  whole  length  and  breadth  of 
our  continent,  and  it  is  with  perpetual  astonishment 
and  amusement  that  one  finds  it  still  prevailing  in 
London,  quite  as  if  it  were  not  as  gross  an  anachronism 
as  the  war-chariot  or  the  sedan-chair.  It  is  ugly,  and 
bewilder ingly  painted  over  with  the  names  of  its  desti 
nations,  and  clad  with  signs  of  patent  medicines  and 
new  plays  and  breakfast  foods  in  every  color  but  the 

47 


LONDON   FILMS 

colors  of  the  rainbow.  It  is  ponderous  and  it  rumbles 
forward  with  a  sound  of  thunder,  and  the  motion  of  a 
steamer  when  they  put  the  table-racks  on.  Seen  from 
the  pavement,  or  from  the  top  of  another  omnibus, 
it  is  of  barbaric  majesty;  not,  indeed,  in  the  single  ex 
ample,  but  as  part  of  the  interminable  line  of  omnibuses 
coming  towards  you.  Then  its  clumsiness  is  lost  in 
the  collective  uncouthness  which  becomes  of  a  tre 
mendous  grandeur.  The  procession  bears  onward  whole 
populations  lifted  high  in  the  air,  and  swaying  and 
lurching  with  the  elephantine  gait  of  things  which  can 
no  more  capsize  than  they  can  keep  an  even  pace.  Of 
all  the  sights  of  London  streets,  this  procession  of  the 
omnibuses  is  the  most  impressive,  and  the  common 
herd  of  Londoners  of  both  sexes  which  it  bears  aloft 
seems  to  suffer  a  change  into  something  almost  as 
rich  as  strange.  They  are  no  longer  ordinary  or  less 
than  ordinary  men  and  women  bent  on  the  shabby 
businesses  that  preoccupy  the  most  of  us;  they  are 
conquering  princes,  making  a  progress  in  a  long  triumph, 
and  looking  down  upon  a  lower  order  of  human  beings 
from  their  wobbling  steeps.  It  enhances  their  apparent 
dignity  that  they  whom  they  look  down  upon  are  not 
merely  the  drivers  of  trucks  and  wagons  of  low  degree, 
but  often  ladies  of  title  in  their  family  carriages,  under 
the  care  of  the  august  family  coachman  and  footman, 
or  gentlemen  driving  in  their  own  traps  or  carts,  or  fares 
in  the  hansoms  that  steal  their  swift  course  through 
and  by  these  ranks;  the  omnibuses  are  always  the  most 
monumental  fact  of  the  scene.  They  dominate  it  in 
bulk  and  height;  they  form  the  chief  impulse  of  the 
tremendous  movement,  and  it  is  they  that  choke  from 
time  to  time  the  channel  of  the  mighty  torrent,  and 
helplessly  hold  it  in  the  arrest  of  a  block. 

48 


A    BLOCK    IN    THE    STRAND 


THE   SIGHTS   AND   SOUNDS   OF  THE   STREETS 

No  one  can  forecast  the  moment  when,  or  the  place 
where,  a  block  may  happen ;  but  mostly  it  occurs  in  mid- 
afternoon,  at  the  intersection  of  some  street  where  a 
line  of  vehicles  is  crossing  the  channel  of  the  torrent. 
Suddenly  all  is  at  a  stand-still,  and  one  of  those  wonder 
ful  English  policemen,  who  look  so  slight  and  young 
after  the  vast  blue  bulks  of  our  Irish  force,  shows  himself 
in  the  middle  of  the  channel,  and  holds  back  its  rapids 
with  the  quiet  gesture  of  extended  hands.  The  currents 
and  counter-currents  gather  and  press  from  the  rear 
and  solidify,  but  in  the  narrow  fissure  the  policeman 
stands  motionless,  with  only  some  such  slight  stir  of  his 
extended  hands  as  a  cat  imparts  to  her  "conscious  tail" 
when  she  waits  to  spring  upon  her  prey. 

The  mute  language  of  his  hands,  down  to  the  lightest 
accent  of  the  fingers,  is  intelligible  to  the  dullest  of 
those  concerned  in  its  interpretation,  and  is  telepathically 
despatched  from  the  nearest  to  the  farthest  driver  in 
the  block.  While  the  policeman  stands  there  in  the 
open  space,  no  wheel  or  hoof  stirs,  and  it  does  not  seem 
as  if  the  particles  of  the  mass  could  detach  themselves 
for  such  separate  movement  as  they  have  at  the  best. 
Softly,  almost  imperceptibly,  he  drops  his  arms,  and  lets 
fall  the  viewless  barrier  which  he  had  raised  with  them; 
he  remains  where  he  was,  but  the  immense  bodies  he 
had  stayed  liquefy  and  move  in  their  opposite  courses, 
and  for  that  time  the  block  is  over. 

If  ever  London  has  her  epic  poet,  I  think  he  will  sing 
the  omnibus;  but  the  poet  who  sings  the  hansom  must 
be  of  a  lyrical  note.  I  do  not  see  how  he  could  be  too 
lyrical,  for  anything  more  like  song  does  not  move  on 
wheels,  and  its  rapid  rhythm  suggests  the  quick  play 
of  fancy  in  that  impetuous  form.  We  have  the  hansom 
with  us,  but  it  does  not  perform  the  essential  part  in 

49 


LONDON    FILMS 

New  York  life  that  it  does  in  London  life.  In  New 
York  you  may  take  a  hansom;  in  London  you  must. 
You  serve  yourself  of  it  as  at  home  you  serve  yourself 
of  the  electric  car;  but  not  by  any  means  at  the  same 
rate.  Nothing  is  more  deceitful  than  the  cheapness  of 
the  hansom,  for  it  is  of  such  an  immediate  and  constant 
convenience  that  the  unwary  stranger's  shilling  has 
slipped  from  him  in  a  sovereign  before  he  knows,  with 
the  swift  succession  of  occasions  when  the  hansom  seems 
imperative.  A  'bus  is  inexpensive,  but  it  is  stolid  and 
bewildering;  a  hansom  is  always  cheerfully  intelligent. 
It  will  set  you  down  at  the  very  place  you  seek ;  you  need 
walk  neither  to  it  nor  from  it;  a  nod,  a  glance,  summons 
it  or  dismisses.  The  'bus  may  be  kind,  but  it  is  not 
flattering,  and  the  hansom  is  flattering  as  well  as  kind; 
flattering  to  one's  pride,  one's  doubt,  one's  timid  hope. 
It  takes  all  the  responsibility  for  your  prompt  and  un 
erring  arrival;  and  you  may  trust  it  almost  implicitly. 
At  any  point  in  London  you  can  bid  it  go  to  any  other 
with  a  confidence  that  I  rarely  found  abused.  Once,  in 
deed,  my  cabman  carried  me  a  long  way  about  at  mid 
night,  and  when  he  finally  left  me  at  my  door,  he  was 
disposed  to  be  critical  of  its  remoteness,  while  he  apolo 
gized  for  the  delay.  I  suggested  that  in  a  difficulty 
like  his  a  map  of  London  would  be  a  good  thing;  but 
though  he  was  so  far  in  drink  as  to  be  able  to  take  the 
joke  in  good  part,  he  denied  that  a  map  would  be  of 
the  least  use  to  a  cabman.  Probably  he  was  right;  my 
map  was  not  of  the  least  use  to  me;  and  his  craft  seemed 
to  feel  their  way  about  through  the  maze  of  streets 
and  squares  and  circles  by  the  same  instinct  that  serves 
a  pilot  on  a  river  in  the  dark.  Their  knowledge  is  a 
thing  of  the  nerves,  not  of  the  brains,  if  there  is  a 
difference;  or  if  there  is  none,  then  it  is  an  affair  of  the 

50 


THE    SIGHTS  AND    SOUNDS    OF  THE   STREETS 

subliminal  consciousness,  it  is  inspiration,  it  is  genius. 
It  could  not  well  be  overpaid,  and  the  cabmen  are  care 
ful  that  it  is  not  underpaid.  I  heard,  indeed,  of  two 
American  ladies  who  succeeded  in  underpaying  their 
cabman;  this  was  their  belief  resting  upon  his  solemn 
declaration;  but  I  myself  failed  in  every  attempt  of  the 
kind.  My  cabman  always  said  that  it  was  not  enough; 
and  then  I  compromised  by  giving  him  too  much. 
Many  stories  are  told  of  the  abusiveness  of  the  class, 
but  a  simple  and  effective  rule  is  to  overpay  them  at 
once  and  be  done  with  it.  I  have  sometimes  had  one 
cast  a  sorrowing  glance  at  the  just  fare  pressed  into  his 
down-stretched  palm,  and  drive  off  in  thankless  silence; 
but  any  excess  of  payment  was  met  with  eager  gratitude. 
I  preferred  to  buy  the  cabman's  good-will,  because  I 
find  this  is  a  world  in  which  I  am  constantly  buying  the 
good-will  of  people  whom  I  do  not  care  the  least  for, 
and  I  did  not  see  why  I  should  make  an  exception  of 
cabmen.  Only  once  did  I  hold  out  against  an  extor 
tionate  demand  of  theirs.  That  was  with  a  cabman  who 
drove  me  to  the  station,  and  said:  "I'll  have  to  get 
another  sixpence  for  this,  sir."  "Well,"  I  returned, 
with  a  hardihood  which  astonished  me,  "you  won't 
get  it  of  me."  But  I  was  then  leaving  London,  and 
was  no  longer  afraid.  Now,  such  is  the  perversity  of 
the  human  spirit,  I  am  sorry  he  did  not  get  the  other 
sixpence  of  me.  One  always  regrets  these  acts  of  jus 
tice,  especially  towards  any  class  of  fellow-beings  whose 
habits  of  prey  are  a  sort  of  vested  rights.  It  is  even 
in  your  own  interest  to  suffer  yourself  to  be  plundered  a 
little;  it  stimulates  the  imagination  of  the  plunderer  to 
high  conceptions  of  equity,  of  generosity,  which  eventu 
ate  in  deeds  of  exemplary  honesty.  Once,  one  of  the 
party  left  a  shawl  in  the  hansom  of  a  cabman  whom  I 

51 


LONDON   FILMS 

had,  after  my  custom  and  principle,  overpaid,  and  who 
had  left  us  at  a  restaurant  upon  our  second  thought 
against  a  gallery  where  we  had  first  proposed  to  be  put 
down.  We  duly  despaired,  but  we  went  and  saw  the 
pictures,  and  when  we  came  out  of  the  gallery  there  was 
our  good  cabman  lying  in  wait  to  identify  us  as  the 
losers  of  the  shawl  which  he  had  found  in  his  cab.  Is 
it  credible  that  if  he  had  been  paid  only  his  legal  fare 
he  would  have  been  at  such  virtuous  pains?  It  may, 
indeed,  be  surmised  that  if  the  shawl  was  not  worth  more 
than  an  imaginable  reward  for  its  restoration  he  was 
actuated  by  self-interest,  but  this  is  a  view  of  our  com 
mon  nature  which  I  will  not  take. 

One  hears  a  good  deal  of  the  greater  quiet  of  London 
after  New  York.  I  think  that  what  you  notice  is  a 
difference  in  the  quality  of  the  noise  in  London.  What 
is  with  us  mainly  a  harsh,  metallic  shriek,  a  grind  of 
trolley  wheels  upon  trolley  tracks,  and  a  wild  battering 
of  their  polygonized  circles  upon  the  rails,  is  in  London 
the  dull,  tormented  roar  of  the  omnibuses  and  the  in 
cessant  cloop-cloop  of  the  cab-horses'  hoofs.  Between 
the  two  sorts  of  noise  there  is  little  choice  for  one  who 
abhors  both.  The  real  difference  is  that  in  many 
neighborhoods  you  can  more  or  less  get  away  from  the 
specialized  noises  in  London,  but  you  never  can  do  this 
in  New  York.  You  hear  people  saying  that  in  these 
refuges  the  London  noise  is  mellowed  to  a  soft  pour  of 
sound,  like  the  steady  fall  of  a  cataract,  which  effectively 
is  silence ;  but  that  is  not  accurate.  The  noise  is  broken 
and  crushed  in  a  huge  rumble  without  a  specialized 
sound,  except  when,  after  midnight,  the  headlong 
clatter  of  a  cab-horse  distinguishes  itself  from  the  pre 
vailing  bulk.  But  the  New  York  noise  is  never  broken 
and  crushed  into  a  rumble;  it  bristles  with  specific 

52 


THE    SIGHTS  AND    SOUNDS    OF  THE  STREETS 

accents,  night  and  day,  which  agonizingly  assort  them 
selves  one  from  another,  and  there  is  no  nook  or  corner 
where  you  can  be  safe  from  them,  as  you  can  measurably 
be  in  London. 

London  is,  if  anything,  rather  more  infested  than 
New  York  with  motors,  as  the  English  more  simply  and 
briefly  call  automobiles.  The  perspective  is  seldom 
free  of  them,  and  from  time  to  time  the  air  is  tainted 
with  their  breath,  which  is  now  one  of  the  most  char 
acteristic  stenches  of  civilization.  They  share  equally 
with  other  vehicles  the  drives  in  the  parks,  though  their 
speed  is  tempered  there  to  the  prevalent  pace.  They 
add  to  the  general  noise  the  shuddering  bursts  of  their 
swift  percussions,  and  make  the  soul  shrink  from  a  fore 
cast  of  what  the  aeroplane  may  be  when  it  shall  come 
hurtling  overhead  with  some  peculiar  screech  as  yet 
unimagined.  The  motor  plays  an  even  more  promi 
nent  part  in  the  country  than  in  London,  especially  in 
those  remnants  of  time  which  the  English  call  week 
ends,  and  which  stretch  from  Friday  afternoon  to  the 
next  Monday  morning.  It  is  within  these  limits  that 
people  are  ordinarily  "asked  down,"  and  as  the  host 
usually  lives  from  five  to  ten  miles  from  the  nearest 
station,  the  guest  is  met  there  by  a  motor  which  hurls 
him  over  the  intervening  ground  at  the  speed  of  the  train 
he  has  just  left.  The  motor  is  still  the  rich  man's  pleas 
ure,  as  the  week-end  is  his  holiday;  and  it  will  be  long 
before  the  one  will  be  the  poor  man's  use,  or  the  other 
his  leisure.  For  the  present  he  must  content  himself, 
in  England,  at  least,  with  his  own  legs,  and  with  the 
bank-holiday  which  now  comes  so  often  as  to  be  dreaded 
by  his  betters  when  it  lets  him  loose  upon  their  travel 
and  sojourn  in  excursional  multitude.  This  is  not 
likely  ever  to  come  under  question  of  affecting  the  Lon- 

53 


LONDON    FILMS 

don  season,  as  one  heard  the  week-end  accused  of  doing. 
It  was  theorized  that  people  went  out  of  town  so  much, 
in  order  to  be  at  home  in  the  country  for  their  friends, 
that  with  two  afternoons  and  three  nights  lost  to  the 
festivities  of  London,  the  season  was  sensibly  if  not 
vitally  affected.  But  that  was  in  the  early  weeks  of  it. 
As  it  grew  and  prospered  through  the  latter  half  of 
June  and  the  whole  of  July,  the  week-end,  as  an  inimical 
factor,  was  no  longer  mentioned.  It  even  began  to  be 
recognized  as  an  essential  element  of  the  season.  Like 
the  king's  visits  to  Denmark,  to  Ireland,  to  Germany,  it 
really  served  to  intensify  the  season. 

At  this  point,  I  find  it  no  longer  possible  to  continue 
celebrating  that  great  moment  in  the  social  life  of  a  vast 
empire  without  accusing  myself  of  triviality  and  hypoc 
risy.  I  have  become  aware  that  I  really  care  nothing 
about  it,  and  know  almost  as  little.  I  fancy  that  with 
most  English  people  who  have  passed  the  heyday  of 
their  youth,  perhaps  without  having  drunk  deeply,  or  at 
all,  of  the  delirious  fountain  of  fashion,  it  is  much  the 
same.  The  purpose  that  the  season  clearly  serves  is 
annually  gathering  into  the  capital  great  numbers 
of  the  people  best  worth  meeting  from  all  parts  of  the 
world-wide  English  dominion,  with  many  aliens  of 
distinction,  not  counting  Americans,  who  are  held  a 
kind  of  middle  species  by  the  natives.  It  is  a  time 
of  perpetual  breakfasts,  lunches,  teas,  and  dinners, 
receptions,  concerts,  and  for  those  who  can  bear  it, 
balls  till  the  day  of  twenty-four  hours'  pleasure  begins 
again,  with  the  early  rites  of  Rotten  Row.  Those  who 
have  a  superfluity  of  invitations  go  on  at  night  from 
one  house  to  another  till  they  fall  lifeless  into  bed  at 
their  own.  One  may  fancy,  if  one  likes,  that  they  show 
the  effects  of  their  pleasure  the  next  day,  that  many  a 

54 


THE   SIGHTS  AND    SOUNDS    OF  THE    STREETS 

soft  cheek  pales  its  English  rose  under  the  flapping 
panama  hats  among  the  riders  in  the  Park,  and  that, 
lively  as  they  still  are,  they  tend  rather  to  be  phantoms 
of  delight.  But  perhaps  this  is  not  so.  What  is  cer 
tain  is  that  for  those  who  do  not  abuse  the  season  it  is  a 
time  of  fine  as  well  as  high  enjoyment,  when  the  alien, 
or  the  middle  species,  if  he  is  known,  or  even  tolerably 
imagined,  may  taste  a  cup  of  social  kindness,  of  hos 
pitality,  deeper  if  not  richer  than  any  in  the  world.  I 
do  not  say  that  one  of  the  middle  species  will  find  in  it  the 
delicate,  the  wild,  the  piquant  flavors  of  certain  remem 
bered  cups  of  kindness  at  home;  and  I  should  not  say 
this  even  if  it  were  true  but  he  will  be  an  ungrateful 
and  ungracious  guest  if  he  criticises.  He  will  more 
wisely  and  justly  accuse  himself  of  having  lost  his 
earlier  zest,  if  he  does  not  come  away  always  thinking, 
"What  interesting  people  I  have  met!" 


VI 

SOME  MISGIVINGS  AS  TO  THE  AMERICAN  INVASION 

IT  is  perhaps  more  than  possible  that  among  the 
interesting  people  one  meets  at  luncheons  and  teas 
and  dinners,  there  will  be,  or  have  been,  other  Americans; 
and  this  suggests  the  perilous  question  whether  the 
English  like  the  Americans  better  than  formerly.  An 
Englishman  might  counter  by  asking  whether  the 
Americans  like  the  English  better  than  formerly;  but 
that  would  not  be  answering  the  question,  which  I 
hope  to  leave  very  much  where  I  found  it.  Yet  Amer 
icans  have  heard  and  read  so  much  of  their  increasing 
national  favor  with  their  contemporary  ancestors  that 
they  may  be  excused  if  not  satisfied  in  a  curiosity  as 
to  the  fact.  Is  the  universal  favor  which  an  emotional 
and  imaginative  press  like  ours  has  portrayed  them  as 
presently  enjoying  in  England  a  reality,  or  is  it  one  of 
the  dreams  which  our  press  now  and  then  indulges, 
and  of  which  the  best  that  can  be  said  is  that  they  do 
no  harm? 

One  not  only  hears  of  this  favor  at  home,  but  when 
one  goes  to  England  one  still  hears  of  it.  To  be  sure 
one  hears  of  it  mainly  from  Americans,  but  they  have 
the  best  means  of  knowing  the  fact;  they  are  chiefly 
concerned,  and  they  are  supported  in  their  belief  by  the 
almost  unvaried  amenity  of  the  English  journals,  which 

56 


THE   AMERICAN   INVASION 

now  very  rarely  take  the  tone  towards  Americans 
formerly  habitual  with  them.  Their  change  of  tone 
is  the  most  obvious  change  which  I  think  Americans 
can  count  upon  noting  when  they  come  to  England,  and 
I  am  far  from  reckoning  it  insignificant.  It  did  not 
happen  of  the  newspapers  themselves;  it  must  be  the 
expression  of  a  prevalent  mood,  if  not  a  very  deeply 
rooted  feeling  in  their  readers.  One  hears  of  their  in 
terest,  their  kindness,  not  from  the  Americans  alone; 
the  English  themselves  sometimes  profess  it,  and  if 
they  overestimate  us,  the  generous  error  is  in  the  right 
direction.  At  the  end  it  must  cease  to  be  an  error,  for, 
as  we  Americans  all  know,  we  need  only  to  be  better 
understood  in  order  to  be  more  highly  prized.  Be 
sides,  liking  is  much  oftener  the  effect  of  willing  than 
has  been  supposed. 

But  if  the  case  were  quite  the  contrary,  if  it  were 
obvious  to  the  casual  experience  of  the  American  trav 
eller  or  sojourner  in  England,  that  his  nationality  was 
now  liked  less  rather  than  more  there,  I  should  still  be 
sorry  to  disturb  what  is  at  the  worst  no  worse  than 
a  fond  illusion.  The  case  is  by  no  means  the  con 
trary,  and  yet  in  consenting  to  some  reason  in  the 
iridescence  which  the  situation  wears  in  the  American 
fancy  I  should  wish  to  distinguish.  For  a  beginning  I 
should  not  wish  to  go  farther  than  to  say  that  the  sort 
of  Englishmen  who  have  always  liked  Americans, 
because  they  have  liked  the  American  ideal  and  the  kind 
of  character  realized  from  it,  now  probably  like  them 
better  than  ever.  They  are  indeed  less  critical  of  our 
departure  from  our  old  ideal  than  some  Americans, 
perhaps  because  they  have  not  foreseen,  as  such  Amer 
icans  have  foreseen,  the  necessary  effect  in  American 
character.  They  can  still  allow  themselves  the  pleasure 

57 


LONDON    FILMS 

which  comes  from  being  confirmed  in  an  impression  by 
events,  and  in  that  pleasure  they  may  somewhat 
romance  us;  but  even  such  Englishmen  are  not  blindly 
fond  of  us.  The  other  sort  of  Englishmen,  the  sort 
that  never  liked  our  ideal  or  our  character,  probably  now 
like  us  as  little  as  ever,  except  as  they  have  noted  our 
change  of  ideal,  and  expect  a  change  of  character.  To 
them  we  may  very  well  have  seemed  a  sort  of  civic 
dissenters,  with  the  implication  of  some  such  quality  of 
offence  as  the  notion  of  dissent  suggests  to  minds  like 
theirs.  We  had  a  political  religion  like  their  own, 
with  a  hierarchy,  a  ritual,  an  establishment  all  complete, 
and  we  violently  broke  with  it.  But  it  is  safe  to  con 
jecture  that  this  sort  of  Englishman  is  too  old  or  too 
old-fashioned  to  live  much  longer;  he  suffers  with  the 
decay  of  certain  English  interests  which  the  American 
prosperity  imperilled  before  it  began  to  imperil  English 
ideals,  if  it  has  indeed  done  so.  His  dying  out  counts 
for  an  increase  of  favor  for  us;  we  enjoy  through  it  a 
sort  of  promotion  by  seniority. 

But  a  new  kind  of  Englishman  has  come  up  of  late 
years,  and  so  far  as  he  is  friendly  to  us  his  friendliness 
should  be  more  gratifying  than  that  even  of  our  older 
friends.  He  has  been  in  America,  either  much  or  little, 
and  has  come  to  like  us  because  he  has  seen  us  at  home. 
If  such  an  Englishman  is  rich  and  noble,  he  has  seen 
our  plutocracy,  and  has  liked  it  because  it  is  lively  and 
inventive  in  its  amusements  and  profusely  original  in 
its  splendors;  but  he  need  not  be  poor  and  plebeian  to 
have  seen  something  of  our  better  life,  and  divined 
something  of  our  real  meaning  from  it.  He  will  not 
be  to  blame  if  he  has  not  divined  our  whole  meaning; 
for  we  are  at  present  rather  in  the  dark  as  to  that  our 
selves,  and  certainly  no  American  who  met  him  in 

58 


THE   AMERICAN    INVASION 

England  could  wish  to  blame  him,  for  his  cordiality 
forms  the  warmest  welcome  that  the  American  can 
have  there.  If  he  has  been  in  America  and  not  liked 
us,  or  our  order  or  ideal,  he  has  still  the  English  good 
nature,  and  if  you  do  not  insist  upon  being  taken  na 
tionally,  there  are  many  chances  that  he  will  take  you 
personally,  and  if  he  finds  you  not  at  all  like  an  Amer 
ican,  he  will  like  you,  as  he  liked  others  in  America  whom 
he  found  not  at  all  like  Americans. 

It  is  the  foible,  however,  of  many  Americans,  both 
at  home  and  abroad,  that  they  want  to  be  taken  na 
tionally,  and  not  personally,  by  foreigners.  Beyond 
any  other  people  we  wish  to  be  loved  by  other  peoples, 
even  by  others  whom  we  do  not  love,  and  we  wish  to 
be  loved  in  the  lump.  We  would  like  to  believe  that 
somehow  our  sheer  Americanism  rouses  the  honor  and 
evokes  the  veneration  of  the  alien,  and  as  we  have  long 
had  a  grudge  against  the  English,  we  would  be  par 
ticularly  glad  to  forget  it  in  a  sense  of  English  re 
spect  and  affection.  We  would  fain  believe  that  the 
English  have  essentially  changed  towards  us,  but 
we  might  easily  deceive  ourselves,  as  we  could  re 
alize  if  we  asked  ourselves  the  reasons  for  such  a 
change. 

The  English  are  very  polite,  far  politer  than  they 
have  been  represented,  and  they  will  not  wittingly 
wound  the  American  visitor,  unless  for  just  cause,  like 
business,  or  the  truth.  Still,  I  should  say  that  the  Amer 
ican  will  fare  best  with  them  if  he  allows  himself  to  be 
taken  individually,  rather  than  typically.  One's  na 
tionality  is  to  others,  after  a  first  moment  of  surprise,  a 
bore  and  a  nuisance,  which  cannot  be  got  out  of  the 
way  too  soon.  I  cannot  keep  my  interest  in  a  German 
or  an  Italian  because  he  is  such;  and  why  should  not 

59 


LONDON    FILMS 

it  be  the  same  with  an  Englishman  in  regard  to  Ameri 
cans?  If  he  thinks  about  our  nationality  at  all,  in 
its  historical  character,  it  is  rather  a  pill,  which  he 
may  be  supposed  to  take  unwillingly,  whether  he  be 
lieves  we  were  historically  right  or  not.  He  may  say 
just  things  about  it,  but  he  will  say  them  more  for  the 
profit  of  Englishmen  than  for  the  pleasure  of  Amer 
icans.  With  our  pleasure  nationally  an  Englishman  is 
very  little  concerned,  and  either  he  thinks  it  out  of 
taste  to  show  any  curiosity  concerning  us,  in  the  bulk, 
or  else  he  feels  none.  He  has  lately  read  and  heard  a 
good  deal  of  talk  about  us ;  but  I  doubt  if  it  has  indelibly 
impressed  him.  If  we  have  lately  done  things  which 
in  their  way  could  not  be  ignored,  they  could  certainly 
be  forgotten,  arid  many  Englishmen,  in  spite  of  them, 
still  remain  immensely  incurious  about  us.  The  Amer 
ican  who  wishes  to  be  taken  nationally  by  them  must 
often  inspire  them  with  a  curiosity  about  us,  before  he 
can  gratify  it,  and  that  is  a  species  of  self-indulgence 
which  leaves  a  pang. 

The  English  have,  or  they  often  express,  an  amiable 
notion  of  us  as  enormously  rich,  and  perhaps  they  think 
we  are  vain  of  our  millionaires,  and  would  be  flattered 
by  an  implication  of  wealth  as  common  to  us  all  as  our 
varying  accent.  But  it  is  as  hard  for  some  of  us  to 
live  up  to  a  full  pocket  as  for  others  to  live  up  to  a  full 
brain.  It  is  hard  even  to  meet  the  expectation  that  you 
will  know,  or  know  about,  our  tremendously  moneyed 
people;  but  here  is  a  curiosity  which  you  do  not  have 
to  inspire  before  you  gratify  it,  for  it  exists  already, 
while  as  to  our  political  affairs,  or  even  our  military 
or  naval  affairs,  not  to  speak  of  our  scientific  or  literary 
affairs,  the  curiosity  that  you  gratify  you  must  first 
have  inspired. 

60 


THE   AMERICAN    INVASION 

Their  curiosity  as  to  our  riches  does  not  judge  the 
English,  as  might  be  supposed.  They  are  very  romantic, 
with  a  young,  lusty  appetite  for  the  bizarre  and  the 
marvellous,  as  their  taste  in  fiction  evinces;  and  they 
need  not  be  contemned  as  sordid  admirers  of  money 
because  they  wish  to  know  the  lengths  it  can  go  to  with 
the  people  who  seem  to  be  just  now  making  the  most 
money.  Their  interest  in  a  phenomenon  which  we  our 
selves  have  not  every  reason  to  be  proud  of,  is  not 
without  justification,  as  we  must  allow  if  we  consider 
a  little,  for  if  we  consider,  we  must  own  that  our  greatest 
achievement  in  the  last  twenty  or  thirty  years  has  been 
in  the  heaping  up  of  riches.  Our  magnificent  success 
in  that  sort  really  eclipses  our  successes  in  every  other, 
and  the  average  American  who  comes  abroad  must  be 
content  to  shine  in  the  reflected  glory  of  those  Americans 
who  have  recently,  more  than  any  others,  rendered 
our  name  illustrious.  If  we  do  not  like  the  fact  all 
that  we  have  to  do  is  to  set  about  doing  commen 
surate  things  in  art,  in  science,  in  letters,  or  even  in 
arms. 

It  will  not  quite  do  to  say  that  the  non-millionaire 
American  enjoys  in  England  the  interest  mixed  with 
commiseration  which  is  the  lot  of  a  poor  relation  of  the 
great  among  kindly  people.  That  would  not  be  true, 
and  possibly  the  fact  is  merely  that  the  name  American 
first  awakens  in  the  English  some  such  associations 
with  riches  as  the  name  South  African  awakened  before 
it  awakened  others  more  poignant  and  more  personal. 
Already  the  South  African  had  begun  to  rival  the  Amer 
ican  in  the  popular  imagination;  as  the  Boer  war  fades 
more  and  more  into  the  past,  the  time  may  come  when 
we  shall  be  confusedly  welcomed  as  Africanders  or 
South  Americans. 

61 


LONDON    FILMS 

If  I  were  to  offer  what  I  have  been  saying  as  my  opin 
ions,  or  my  conclusions  from  sufficient  observations  I 
should  be  unfair,  if  not  uncandid.  The  sum  of  what 
one  sees  and  hears  in  a  foreign  country  is  as  nothing 
to  the  sum  of  what  one  does  not  see  and  hear;  and  the 
immense  balance  may  be  so  far  against  the  foregoing 
inferences  that  it  is  the  part  of  mere  prudence  to  declare 
that  they  are  not  my  opinions  or  conclusions,  but  are 
only  impressions,  vague  and  hurried,  guesses  from 
cursory  observations,  deductions  from  slight  casual 
incidents.  They  are  mere  gleams  from  social  facets, 
sparks  struck  out  by  chance  encounter,  and  never 
glancing  lights  from  the  rarefied  atmosphere  in  which 
the  two  nations  have  their  formal  reciprocities.  For 
all  that  I  have  really  the  right  to  say  from  substantial 
evidence  to  the  contrary,  I  might  very  well  say  that 
the  English  value  us  for  those  things  of  the  mind  and 
soul  which  we  are  somewhat  neglectful  of  ourselves, 
and  I  insist  the  more,  therefore,  that  it  is  only  their 
love  of  fairy-tales  which  is  taken  with  the  notion  of  an 
opulence  so  widespread  among  us  as  to  constitute  us  a 
nation  of  potential,  if  not  actual,  millionaires. 

They  would  hasten  to  reproach  me,  I  am  afraid,  for 
speaking  of  England,  though  merely  for  purposes  of 
illustration,  as  a  foreign  country.  One  is  promptly  told 
that  Americans  are  not  regarded  as  foreigners  in  Eng 
land,  and  is  left  to  conjecture  one's  self  a  sort  of  com 
promise  between  English  and  alien,  a  little  less  kin  than 
Canadian  and  more  kind  than  Australian.  The  idea 
has  its  quaintness;  but  the  American  in  England  has 
been  singularly  unfortunate  if  he  has  had  reason  to  be 
lieve  that  the  kindness  done  him  is  not  felt.  What  has 
always  been  true  of  the  English  is  true  now.  They 
do  not  say  or  do  the  thing  which  is  not,  out  of  polite- 

62 


THE   AMERICAN    INVASION 

ness;  their  hypocrisies,  if  they  have  any,  are  for  their 
God,  and  not  for  their  fellow-man.  When  they  talk  of 
their  American  brethren,  they  mean  it;  just  as  when 
they  do  not  talk  of  them  so  they  mean  something  less, 
or  nothing  at  all.  The  American  who  wishes  to  be 
taken  nationally,  may  trust  any  expression  friendly  to 
our  nation  that  he  hears ;  but  still  I  think  he  will  have  a 
better  time  if  he  prefers  being  taken  personally.  That 
is  really  making  one's  self  at  home  in  a  different,  I  will 
no  longer  say  a  foreign,  country;  the  English  are  eager 
hosts,  and  wish  you  to  make  yourself  at  home — if  they 
like  you.  Nationally  we  cannot  make  ourselves,  or 
be  made  at  home,  except  in  the  United  States.  To  any 
other  people,  to  people  sometimes  claiming  to  be  nearer 
than  the  first  degree  of  cousinship,  our  nationality, 
taking  it  in  bulk,  is  necessarily  a  mystery.  We  are  so 
very  like  them;  why  should  we  be  so  very  unlike  them? 
The  difference  puzzles  them,  annoys  them;  why  seek 
points  of  it,  and  turn  them  to  the  light?  The  same 
mystery  distresses  the  American  when  the  points  of 
their  difference  are  turned  to  the  light.  A  man's  na 
tionality  is  something  he  is  justly  proud  of,  but  not  till 
it  is  put  aside  can  the  man  of  another  nation  have  any 
joy  of  him  humanly,  spiritually.  If  you  insist  upon 
talking  to  the  English  about  American  things,  you 
have  them  in  an  unknown  world,  a  really  unknowable 
world,  as  you  yourself  know  it;  and  you  bewilder  and 
weary  them,  unless  they  are  studying  Americanism, 
and  then  they  still  do  not  understand  you.  You  are 
speaking  English,  but  the  meaning  is  a  strange  tongue. 
I  say  again  that  I  do  not  know  why  any  one  should 
wish  to  be  caressed  for  his  nationality.  I  think  one 
might  more  self-respectfully  wish  to  be  liked  for  one's 
self  than  joined  with  a  hundred  million  compatriots, 

63 


LONDON   FILMS 

and  loved  in  the  lump.  If  the  English,  however,  are 
now  trying  to  love  us  nationally  we  should  be  careful 
not  to  tax  their  affections  too  heavily,  or  demand  too 
much  of  them.  We  must  remember  that  they  are  more 
apt  to  be  deceived  by  our  likeness  to  themselves  than 
by  our  unlikeness.  When  an  Englishman  and  an  Amer 
ican  meet  on  common  ground  they  have  arrived  from 
opposite  poles.  The  Englishman,  though  he  knows  the 
road  the  American  has  come,  cannot  really  imagine 
it.  His  whole  experience  of  life  has  taught  him  that 
if  you  have  come  that  road,  you  are  not  the  kind  of 
man  you  seem;  therefore,  you  have  not  come  that  road, 
or  else  you  are  another  kind  of  man.  He  revolves  in  a 
maze  of  hopeless  conjecture;  he  gives  up  trying  to  guess 
your  conundrum,  and  reads  into  you  the  character  of 
some  Englishman  of  parallel  tradition.  If  he  likes  you 
after  that,  you  may  be  sure  it  is  for  yourself  and  not 
for  your  nation.  All  the  same  he  may  not  know  it, 
and  may  think  he  likes  you  because  you  are  an  agreeable 
American. 

My  line  of  reasoning,  or  I  had  better  say  of  fancying 
(that,  on  such  dangerous  ground,  is  safest),  is  forcing  an 
inference  from  which  I  shrink  a  little;  it  seems  so  very 
bold,  so  very  contrary  to  recent  prepossessions.  But  the 
candor  which  I  would  be  so  glad  not  to  practise,  obliges 
me  to  say  that  I  think  the  American  who  is  himself 
interesting,  would  have  been  as  welcome  in  England 
twenty-five  years  ago  as  at  this  day,  and  he  would  not 
have  been  expected  to  be  rich,  or  to  have  the  acquaint 
ance  of  rich  Americans.  Already,  at  that  remote  pe 
riod,  certain  fellow-countrymen  of  ours  had  satisfied 
the  English  taste  for  wildness  in  us.  There  had  been 
Buffalo  Bill,  with  his  show,  and  there  had  been  other 
Buffalo  Bills,  literary  ones,  who  were  themselves  shows. 

64 


THE   AMERICAN   INVASION 

There  had  then  arisen  a  conjecture,  a  tardy  surmise, 
of  an  American  fineness,  which  might  be  as  well  in  its 
way  as  the  American  wildness,  and  the  American  who 
had  any  imaginable  touch  of  this  found  as  warm  a 
liking  ready  for  him  then  as  the  wild  American  found 
earlier,  or  the  rich  American  finds  later. 

In  fact,  interesting  Americans  have  always  been  per 
sonally  liked  in  England,  if  I  must  really  go  to  the 
extreme  of  saying  it.  What  the  English  now  join  in 
owning,  if  the  question  of  greater  kindness  between  the 
two  countries  comes  up,  is  that  their  ruling  class  made 
a  vast  mistake  in  choosing,  officiously  though  not  offi 
cially,  the  side  of  the  South  in  our  Civil  War.  They 
own  it  frankly,  eagerly.  But  they  owned  the  same 
thing  frankly,  if  not  so  eagerly,  twenty-five  years  ago. 
Even  during  the  Civil  War,  I  doubt  if  an  acceptable 
American  would  have  suffered  personally  among  them. 
He  would  have  suffered  nationally,  but  he  has  now  and 
then  to  suffer  so  still,  for  they  cannot  have  the  same 
measure  of  his  nationality  as  he,  and  they  necessarily 
tread  upon  its  subtile  circumferences  here  and  there. 

From  the  very  beginning  of  Americanism  the  case 
has  been  the  same.  The  American  in  England  during 
the  Civil  War  was  strangely  unfortunate  if  he  did  not 
meet  many  and  great  Englishmen  who  thought  and 
felt  with  him;  and  if  there  were  now  any  American  so 
stricken  in  years  as  to  be  able  to  testify  from  his  own 
experience  of  the  English  attitude  towards  us  hi  the 
War  of  Independence,  he  could  tell  us  of  the  outspoken 
and  constant  sympathy  of  Chatham,  Burke,  Fox,  Wai- 
pole,  and  their  like,  with  the  American  cause — which 
they  counted  the  English  cause.  He  could  tell  of  the 
deep  undercurrent  of  favor  among  the  English  people, 
which  the  superficial  course  of  power  belied  and  at  last 

65 


LONDON    FILMS 

ceased  to  control,  in  our  earlier  vital  war  as  well  as  in 
our  later. 

So  much  for  that  consideration  of  us  nationally,  which 
I  do  not  think  England,  in  her  quality  of  hostess,  is 
bound  to  show  her  several  American  guests.  I  do  not 
blame  her  that  the  sympathy  of  her  greatest  sons,  so 
far  as  it  has  been  shown  us  nationally,  has  been  shown 
in  her  interest,  which  they  believed  the  supreme  in 
terest  of  mankind,  rather  than  in  our  interest,  which  it 
is  for  us  to  believe  the  supreme  interest  of  mankind. 
Even  when  they  are  talking  America  they  are  thinking 
England;  they  cannot  otherwise;  they  must;  it  is  im 
perative;  it  is  essential  that  they  should.  We  talk  of 
England  on  the  same  terms,  with  our  own  inner  version. 

There  is  another  point  in  this  inquiry  which  I  hesitate 
to  touch,  and  which  if  I  were  better  advised  I  should 
not  touch — that  is,  the  English  interest  in  the  beauty 
and  brilliancy  of  our  women.  Their  charm  is  now 
magnanimously  conceded  and  now  violently  confuted 
in  their  public  prints;  now  and  then  an  Englishman 
lets  himself  go — over  his  own  signature  even,  at  times — 
and  denounces  our  women,  their  loveliness,  their  liveli 
ness,  their  goodness,  in  terms  which  if  I  repeated  them 
would  make  some  timider  spirits  pause  in  their  resolu 
tion  to  marry  English  dukes  and  run  English  society. 
But  his  hot  words  are  hardly  cold  before  another  Eng 
lishman  comes  to  the  rescue  of  our  countrywomen,  and 
lifts  them  again  to  that  pinnacle  where  their  merits 
quite  as  much  as  the  imagination  of  their  novelists  have 
placed  them.  Almost  as  much  as  our  millionaires 
they  are  the  object  of  a  curiosity  which  one  has  not 
had  to  inspire.  Where,  in  what  part,  hi  which  favored 
city,  do  they  most  abound?  What  is  the  secret  of  their 
dazzling  wit  and  beauty,  the  heart  of  their  mystery? 

66 


THE   AMERICAN    INVASION 

The  most  ardent  of  their  votaries  must  flush  in  generous 
deprecation  when  those  orphic  inquiries  flow  from  lips 
quite  as  divine  as  their  own. 

For  the  rest,  if  there  is  really  that  present  liking  for 
Americans  in  England,  which  we  must  wish  to  touch 
with  all  delicacy  as  the  precious  bloom  of  a  century- 
plant  at  last  coming  to  flower,  the  explanation  may  be 
sought  perhaps  in  an  effect  of  the  English  nature  to 
which  I  shall  not  be  the  one  to  limit  it.  They  have 
not  substantially  so  much  as  phenomenally  changed 
towards  us.  They  are,  like  ourselves,  always  taking 
stock,  examining  themselves  to  see  what  they  have  on 
hand.  From  time  to  time  they  will,  say,  accuse  them 
selves  of  being  insular,  and  then,  suddenly,  they  invite 
themselves  to  be  continental,  to  be  French,  to  be  Ger 
man,  to  be  Italian,  to  be  Bulgarian,  or  whatever;  and 
for  a  while  they  believe  that  they  have  become  so.  All 
this  time  they  remain  immutably  English.  It  is  not  that 
they  are  insensible  of  their  defects;  they  tell  themselves 
of  them  in  clamorous  tones;  and  of  late,  possibly,  they 
have  asked  themselves  why  they  are  not  what  they 
think  the  Americans  are  in  certain  things.  If  the  logic 
of  their  emotions  in  this  direction  were  a  resolution  to 
like  all  the  Americans  with  a  universal  affection,  I  should 
admire  their  spirit,  but  I  should  feel  a  difficulty  in  its  op 
eration  for  a  reason  which  I  hesitate  to  confess;  I  do  not 
like  all  the  Americans  myself. 


VII 
IN  THE  GALLERY  OF  THE  COMMONS 

IN  speaking  of  any  specific  social  experience  it  is  al 
ways  a  question  of  how  far  one  may  pardonably 
err  on  the  side  of  indiscretion;  and  if  I  remember  here 
a  dinner  in  the  basement  of  the  House  of  Commons — in 
a  small  room  of  the  architectural  effect  of  a  chapel  in  a 
cathedral  crypt — it  is  with  the  sufficiently  meek  hope  of 
keeping  well  within  bounds  which  only  the  nerves  can 
ascertain. 

The  quaintness  of  the  place  may  have  contributed 
to  an  uncommon  charm  in  the  occasion;  but  its  charm 
was  perhaps  a  happy  accident  which  would  have  tried 
in  vain  to  repeat  itself  even  there.  It  ended  in  a  visit 
to  the  House,  where  the  strangers  were  admitted  on 
the  rigid  terms  and  in  the  strict  limits  to  which  non- 
members  must  submit  themselves.  But  one  might 
well  undergo  much  more  in  order  to  hear  John  Burns 
speak  in  the  place  to  which  he  has  fought  his  right  under 
a  system  of  things  as  averse  as  can  be  imagined  to  a 
working-man's  sharing  in  the  legislation  for  working- 
men.  The  matter  in  hand  that  night  chanced  to  be  one 
peculiarly  interesting  to  a  believer  in  the  people's  doing 
as  many  things  as  possible  for  themselves,  as  the  body 
politic,  instead  of  leaving  them  to  a  variety  of  bodies 
corporate.  The  steamboat  service  on  the  Thames  had 
grown  so  insufficient  and  so  inconvenient  that  it  was 

68 


IN  THE  GALLERY  OF  THE  COMMONS 

now  a  question  of  having  it  performed  by  the  London 
County  Council,  which  should  be  authorized  to  run  lines 
of  boats  solely  in  the  public  interest,  and  not  merely 
for  the  pleasure  and  profit  of  directors  and  stockholders. 
The  monstrous  proposition  did  not  alarm  those  fears  of 
socialism  which  anything  of  the  kind  would  have  roused 
with  us;  nobody  seemed  to  expect  that  blowing  up  the 
Parliament  buildings  with  dynamite  would  be  the  next 
step  towards  anarchy.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  hear- 
hearing  from  Mr.  Burns's  friends,  with  some  friendly 
chaffing  from  his  enemies  as  he  went  on,  steadily  and 
quietly,  with  his  statement  of  the  case;  but  there  was 
no  serious  opposition  to  the  measure  which  was  after 
wards  carried  in  due  course  of  legislation. 

I  was  left  to  think  two  or  three  things  about  the 
matter  which,  though  not  strictly  photographic,  are 
yet  so  superficial  that  they  will  not  be  out  of  place  here. 
Several  members  spoke  besides  Mr.  Burns,  but  the  labor 
leader  was  easily  first,  not  only  in  the  business  quality 
of  what  he  said,  but  in  his  business  fashion  of  saying  it. 
As  much  as  any  of  them,  as  the  oldest-familied  and 
longest-leisured  of  them,  his  manners  had 

"that  repose 
Which  marks  the  caste  of  Vere  de  Vere," 

and  is  supposed  to  distinguish  them  from  those  of  the 
castes  of  Smith  and  Brown.  But  I  quickly  forgot  this 
in  considering  how  far  socialism  had  got  itself  realized 
in  London  through  the  activities  of  the  County  Council, 
which  are  so  largely  in  the  direction  of  municipal  control. 
One  hears  and  reads  as  little  of  socialism  now  in  London 
as  in  New  York,  but  that  is  because  it  has  so  effectually 
passed  from  the  debated  principle  to  the  accomplished 
fact.  It  has  been  embodied  in  so  many  admirable 


LONDON    FILMS 

works  that  the  presumption  is  rather  in  favor  of  it  as 
something  truly  conservative.  It  is  not,  as  with  us, 
still  under  the  ban  of  a  prejudice  too  ignorant  to  know 
in  how  many  things  it  is  already  effective;  but  this  is, 
of  course,  mainly  because  English  administration  is  so 
much  honester  than  ours.  It  can  be  safely  taken  for 
granted  that  a  thing  ostensibly  done  for  the  greatest 
good  of  the  greatest  number  is  not  really  done  for  the 
profit  of  a  few  on  the  inside.  The  English  can  let  the 
County  Council  put  municipal  boats  on  the  Thames 
with  the  full  assurance  that  the  County  Council  will 
never  be  in  case  to  retire  on  a  cumulative  income  from 
,them. 

But  apparently  the  English  can  do  this  only  by  laying 
the  duty  and  responsibility  upon  the  imperial  legislat 
ure.  It  was  droll  to  sit  there  and  hear  a  body,  ulti 
mately  if  not  immediately  charged  with  the  welfare  of 
a  state  conscious  in  every  continent  and  the  islands  of 
every  sea,  debating  whether  the  municipal  steamboats 
would  not  be  too  solely  for  the  behoof  of  the  London 
suburb  of  West  Ham.  England,  Scotland,  Ireland, 
Canada,  India,  South  Africa,  Australia,  New  Zealand, 
with  any  of  their  tremendous  interests,  must  rest  in 
abeyance  while  that  question  concerning  West  Ham 
was  pending.  We,  in  our  way,  would  have  settled  it 
by  the  vote  of  a  Board  of  Aldermen,  subject  to  the  veto 
of  a  mayor;  but  we  might  not  have  settled  it  so  justly 
as  the  British  Parliament  did  in  concentrating  the  collec 
tive  wisdom  of  a  world-empire  upon  it. 

The  House  of  Commons  took  its  tremendous  respon 
sibility  lightly,  even  gayly.  Except  for  the  dramatic 
division  into  government  and  opposition  benches,  the 
spectacle  was  in  no  wise  impressive.  There  was  a 
restless  going  and  coming  of  members,  as  if  they  could 

70 


IN  THE  GALLERY  OF  THE  COMMONS 

not  stand  being  bored  by  their  duties  any  longer,  and 
then,  after  a  brief  absence,  found  strength  for  them. 
Some  sat  with  their  hats  on,  some  with  their  hats  off; 
some  with  their  legs  stretched  out,  some  with  their  legs 
pulled  in.  One  could  easily  distinguish  the  well-known 
faces  of  ministers,  who  paid  no  more  heed,  apparently, 
to  what  was  going  on  than  the  least  recognizable  mem 
bers  unknown  to  caricature.  The  reporters,  in  their 
gallery,  alone  seemed  to  give  any  attention  to  the  pro 
ceedings,  but  doubtless  the  speaker,  under  his  official 
wig,  concerned  himself  with  them.  The  people  ap 
parently  most  interested  were,  like  myself,  in  the  vis 
itors'  gallery.  From  time  to  time  one  of  them  asked 
the  nearest  usher  who  it  was  that  was  speaking;  in  his 
eagerness  to  see  and  hear,  one  of  them  would  rise  up 
and  crane  forward,  and  then  the  nearest  usher  would 
make  him  sit  down;  but  the  ushers  were  generally  very 
lenient,  and  upon  the  wrhole  looked  quite  up  to  the  level 
of  the  average  visitor  in  intelligence. 

I  am  speaking  of  the  men  visitors;  the  intellectual 
light  of  the  women  visitors,  whatever  it  was,  was  much 
dispersed  and  intercepted  by  the  screen  behind  which 
they  were  placed.  I  do  not  know  why  the  women  should 
be  thus  obscured,  for,  if  the  minds  of  members  were  in 
danger  of  being  distracted  by  their  presence,  I  should 
think  they  would  be  still  more  distracted  when  the  ele 
ment  of  mystery  was  added  to  it  by  the  grille.  Seen 
across  the  whole  length  of  the  House  from  the  men's 
gallery  the  women  looked  as  if  tightly  pressed  against 
the  grille,  and  had  a  curiously  thin,  phantasmal  ef 
fect,  or  the  effect  of  frescoed  figures  done  very  flat. 
To  the  imaginative  spectator  their  state  might  have 
symbolized  the  relation  of  women  to  Parliamentary 
politics,  of  which  we  read  much  in  English  novels,  and 

6  71 


LONDON    FILMS 

even  English  newspapers.  Women  take  much  more 
interest  in  political  affairs  in  England  than  with  us; 
that  is  well  known;  but  it  may  not  be  so  well  known 
that  they  are  in  much  greater  enjoyment  of  the  fran 
chise,  if  the  franchise  is  indeed  a  pleasure.  I  do  not 
know  whether  they  vote  for  school-committeemen,  or 
whether  there  are  school-committeemen  for  them  to  vote 
for;  but  they  may  vote  for  guardians  of  the  poor,  and 
may  themselves  be  voted  for  to  that  office;  and  they 
may  vote  for  members  of  the  Urban  Councils  and  the 
County  Councils  if  they  have  property  to  be  taxed  by 
those  bodies.  This  is  the  right  for  which  our  Revolu 
tion  was  made,  though  we  continue,  with  regard  to 
women,  the  Georgian  heresy  of  taxation  without  repre 
sentation;  but  it  is  doubtful  to  the  barbarian  whether 
good  can  come  of  women's  mixing  in  parliamentary 
elections  at  which  they  have  no  vote.  Of  course,  with 
us  a  like  interference  would  be  taken  jocosely,  ironically; 
it  would,  at  the  bottom,  be  a  good  joke,  amusing  from 
the  tendency  of  the  feminine  temperament  to  acts  of 
circus  in  moments  of  high  excitement;  but  whether  the 
Englishmen  regard  it  so,  the  English  alone  know. 
They  are  much  more  serious  than  we,  and  perhaps  they 
take  it  as  a  fit  manifestation  of  the  family  principle 
which  is  the  underlying  force  of  the  British  Constitution. 
One  heard  of  ladies  who  were  stumping  (or  whatever 
is  the  English  equivalent  of  stumping)  the  country  on 
the  preferential  tariff  question  and  the  other  questions 
which  divide  Conservatives  and  Liberals;  but  in  spite 
of  these  examples  of  their  proficiency  the  doubt  re 
mained  whether  those  who  have  not  the  suffrage  can 
profitably  attempt  to  influence  it.  Till  women  can 
make  up  their  minds  to  demand  and  accept  its  respon 
sibilities,  possibly  they  will  do  best  to  let  it  alone. 

72 


IN    THE    GALLERY    OF   THE   COMMONS 

When  they  want  it  they  will  have  it;  but  until  they  do, 
it  may  not  be  for  nothing,  or  even  for  the  control  of  the 
members'  wandering  fancies,  that  the  House  of  Com 
mons  interposes  between  them  and  itself  the  grille 
through  which  they  show  like  beauteous  wraiths  or 
frescoes  in  the  flat.  That  screen  is  emblematic  of 
their  real  exclusion  from  the  higher  government  which 
their  social  participation  in  parliamentary  elections, 
and  the  men's  habit  of  talking  politics  with  them, 
flatter  them  into  a  delusive  sense  of  sharing.  A  woman 
may  be  the  queen  of  England,  but  she  may  not  be 
one  of  its  legislators.  That  must  be  because  women 
like  being  queens  and  do  not  really  care  for  being 
legislators. 


VIII 
THE  MEANS  OF  SOJOURN 

fTlHE  secular  intensification  of  the  family  life  makes 
X  it  possible  for  the  English  to  abandon  their  secular 
domesticity,  when  they  will,  without  apparent  detri 
ment  to  the  family  life.  Formerly  the  English  family 
which  came  up  to  London  for  the  season  or  a  part  of  it 
went  into  a  house  of  its  own,  or,  in  default  of  that,  went 
into  lodgings,  or  into  a  hotel  of  a  kind  happily  obso 
lescent.  Such  a  family  now  frankly  goes  into  one  of  the 
hotels  which  abound  in  London,  of  a  type  combining 
more  of  the  Continental  and  American  features  than 
the  traits  of  the  old  English  hotel,  which  was  dark,  cold, 
grim,  and  silently  rapacious,  heavy  in  appointments 
and  unwholesome  in  refection.  The  new  sort  of  hotel 
is  apt  to  be  large,  but  it  is  of  all  sizes,  and  it  offers  a 
home  reasonably  cheerful  on  inclusive  terms  not  at  all 
ruinous.  It  has  a  table-d'hote  dinner  at  separate  tables 
and  a  fair  version  of  the  French  cuisine.  If  it  is  one  of 
the  more  expensive,  it  will  not  be  dearer  than  our  dear 
est,  and  if  one  of  the  cheaper,  it  will  be  better  in  every 
way  than  our  cheaper.  The  supply  has  created  a  de 
mand  which  apparently  did  not  exist  before,  and  the 
Englishman  has  become  a  hotel-dweller,  or  at  least  a 
hotel-sojourner,  such  as  he  had  long  reproached  the 
American  with  being. 

In  like  manner,  with  the  supply  of  good  restaurants 

74 


THE   MEANS    OF   SOJOURN 

in  great  number  and  variety,  he  has  become  a  diner  and 
luncher  at  restaurants.  Whether  he  has  been  able  to 
exact  as  much  as  he  really  wanted  of  the  privacy  once 
supposed  so  dear  to  him,  a  stranger,  even  of  the  middle 
species,  cannot  say,  but  it  is  evident  that  at  his  hotel 
or  his  restaurant  he  dines  or  lunches  as  publicly  as  ever 
the  American  did  or  does ;  and  he  has  his  friends  to  din 
ner  or  lunch  without  pretence  of  a  private  dining-room. 
One  hears  that  this  sort  of  open  conviviality  tempts  by 
its  facility  to  those  excesses  of  hospitality  which  are  such 
a  drain  on  English  incomes;  but  again  that  is  something 
of  which  an  outsider  can  hardly  venture  to  have  an 
opinion.  What  is  probably  certain  is  that  the  modern 
hotel  and  restaurant,  with  their  cheerful  ease,  are  push 
ing  the  old-fashioned  lodging  as  well  as  the  old-fashioned 
hotel  out  of  the  general  favor,  and  have  already  driven 
them  to  combine  their  attractions  or  repulsions  on  a  level 
where  they  are  scarcely  distinguishable  as  separate  species. 
In  the  streets  neighboring  on  Piccadilly  there  are 
many  apartments  which  are  effectively  small  hotels, 
where  you  pay  a  certain  price  for  your  rooms,  and  a 
certain  fixed  price  for  your  meals.  You  must  leave 
this  neighborhood  if  you  want  the  true  lodging  where 
you  pay  for  your  apartment,  and  order  the  provisions 
which  are  cooked  for  you,  and  which  are  apportioned 
to  your  daily  needs.  This  is  the  ideal,  and  it  is  not  seri 
ously  affected  by  the  reality  that  your  provisions  are 
also  apportioned  to  the  needs  of  your  landlord's  family. 
Even  then,  the  ideal  remains  beautiful,  and  you  have 
an  image,  somewhat  blurred  and  battered,  of  home, 
such  as  money  cannot  elsewhere  buy  you.  If  your 
landlord  is  the  butler  who  has  married  the  cook,  your 
valeting  and  cooking  approach  as  nearly  perfection  as 
you  can  hopefully  demand. 

75 


LONDON    FILMS 

It  will  be  well  not  to  scan  too  closely  the  infirmities 
of  the  appointments  over  which  an  air  of  decent  reti 
cence  is  cast,  and  it  will  have  been  quite  useless  to  try 
guarding  all  the  points  at  which  you  might  be  plundered. 
The  result  is  more  vexatious  than  ruinous,  and  perhaps 
in  a  hotel  also  you  would  be  plundered.  In  a  lodging 
you  are  promptly  and  respectfully  personalized;  your 
tastes  are  consulted,  if  not  gratified;  your  minor  wants, 
in  which  your  comfort  lies,  are  interpreted,  and  possibly 
there  grows  up  round  you  the  semblance,  which  is  not 
altogether  deceitful,  of  your  own  house. 

The  theory  is  admirable,  but  I  think  the  system  is 
in  decay,  though  to  say  this  is  something  like  accusing 
the  stability  of  the  Constitution.  Very  likely  if  some 
American  ghost  were  to  revisit  a  well-known  London 
street  a  hundred  years  from  now,  he  would  find  it  still 
with  the  legend  of  "Apartments"  in  every  transom; 
and  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  lodgings  have  by  any 
means  fallen  wholly  to  the  middle,  much  less  the  lower 
middle,  classes.  In  one  place  there  was  a  marquis  over 
head;  in  another  there  was  a  lordship  of  unascertained 
degree,  who  was  heard  on  a  court  night  being  got  ready 
by  his  valet  and  the  landlord's  whole  force,  and  then 
marking  his  descent  to  his  cab  by  the  clanking  of  his 
sword  upon  the  stairs,  after  which  the  joint  service 
spent  a  good  part  of  the  night  in  celebrating  the  event 
at  a  banquet  in  the  basement.  At  two  lodgings  in  a 
most  unpretentious  street,  it  was  the  landlords'  boast 
that  a  royal  princess  had  taken  tea  with  their  tenants, 
who  were  of  the  quality  to  be  rightfully  taken  tea  with 
by  a  royal  princess;  and  at  certain  hours  of  the  after 
noon  during  the  season  it  was  not  uncommon  to  see 
noble  equipages  standing  at  the  doors  of  certain  apart 
ments  with  a  full  equipment  of  coachmen  and  foot- 

76 


THE   MEANS   OF   SOJOURN 

men,  ana  ladies  of  unmistakable  fashion  ascending  and 
descending  by  the  carriage  -  steps  like  the  angels  on 
Jacob's  ladder.  It  could  be  surmised  that  they  were 
visiting  poor  relations,  or  modest  merit  of  some  sort, 
but  it  was  not  necessary  to  suppose  this,  and  upon  the 
whole  I  prefer  not. 

The  search  for  lodgings,  which  began  before  the  sea 
son  was  conscious  of  itself,  was  its  own  reward  in  the 
pleasures  it  yielded  to  the  student  of  human  nature  and 
the  lover  of  mild  adventure.  The  belief  in  lodgings 
was  a  survival  from  an  age  of  faith,  when  in  the  early 
eighteen-eighties  they  seemed  the  most  commodious 
and  desirable  refuge  to  the  outwandering  American 
family  which  then  first  proved  them.  The  fragmentary 
outwanderers  who  now  visited  London,  after  an  absence 
of  twenty-two  years,  did  not  take  into  account  the  fact 
that  their  apartment  of  long  ago  was  the  fine  event  of 
the  search,  prolonged  for  weeks,  of  two  friends,  singu 
larly  intelligent  and  rarely  versed  in  London;  they 
took  it  as  a  type,  and  expected  to  drive  directly  to  its  fel 
low.  They  drove  indirectly  to  unnumbered  lodgings 
unlike  it  and  unworthy  of  its  memory,  and  it  was  not 
until  after  three  days  that  they  were  able  to  fix  upon  a 
lodging  that  appeared  the  least  remote  from  their  ideal. 
Then,  in  a  street  not  too  far  from  Mayfair,  and  of  the 
quality  of  a  self-respectful  dependant  of  Belgravia,  they 
set  up  their  breathless  Lares  and  panting  Penates,  and 
settled  down  with  a  sense  of  comfort  that  grew  upon 
them  day  by  day.  The  place  undeniably  had  its  charm, 
if  not  its  merit.  The  drawing-room  chairs  were  in  a 
proper  pattern  of  brocade,  and,  though  abraded  at  their 
edges  and  corners,  were  of  a  tasteful  frame;  the  arm 
chairs,  covered  like  the  sofa  in  a  cheerful  cretonne,  lent 
the  parting  guest  the  help  of  an  outward  incline;  the 

77 


LONDON    FILMS 

sofa,  heaped  with  cushions,  could  not  conceal  a  broken 
spring,  though  it  braved  it  out  with  the  consciousness 
of  having  been  sat  upon  by  a  royal  princess  who  had 
once  taken  tea  in  that  lodging.  But  the  other  appoint 
ments,  including  a  pretty  writing-desk  and  a  multitude 
of  china  plates  almost  hiding  the  wall-paper,  were  un- 
fractured,  and  the  little  dining-room  was  very  cosey. 
After  breakfast  it  had  the  habit  of  turning  itself  into  a 
study,  where  one  of  the  outwanderers  used  to  set  himself 
down  and  ask  himself  with  pen  and  ink  what  he  honest 
ly  thought  and  felt  about  this  England  which  he  had 
always  been  more  or  less  bothering  about.  The  inquiry 
took  time  which  he  might  better  have  spent  in  day 
dreaming  before  the  prospect  of  the  gray  March  heaven, 
with  the  combs  of  the  roofs  and  the  chimney-pots 
mezzotinted  against  it.  He  might  have  more  profitably 
wasted  his  time  even  on  the  smoke-blackened  yellow- 
brick  house-walls,  with  their  juts  and  angles,  and  their 
clambering  pipes  of  unknown  employ,  in  the  middle  dis 
tance;  or,  in  the  foreground,  the  skylights  of  cluttered 
outbuildings,  and  the  copings  of  the  walls  of  grimy  back 
yards,  where  the  sooty  trees  were  making  a  fight  with 
the  spring,  and  putting  forth  a  rash  of  buds  like  green 
points  of  electric  light:  the  same  sort  of  light  that 
showed  in  the  eyes  of  a  black  cat  seasonably  appearing 
under  them.  Inquiries  into  English  civilization  can 
always  wait,  but  such  passing  effects  stay  for  no  man, 
and  I  put  them  down  roughly  in  behalf  of  a  futile  phi 
losopher  who  ought  to  have  studied  them  in  their  inex 
haustible  detail. 

He  could  not  be  reproached  with  insensibility  to  his 
domestic  circumstance,  from  the  combination  of  cook 
and  butler  which  took  him  into  its  ideal  keeping  to  the 
unknown,  unheard,  and  unseen  German  baron  who 

78 


THE    MEANS    OF   SOJOURN 

had  the  dining-room  floor,  and  was  represented  through 
his  open  door  by  his  breakfast-trays  and  his  perfectly 
valeted  clothes.  The  valeting  in  that  house  was  unex 
ceptionable,  and  the  service  at  table  was  of  a  dress- 
coated  decorum  worthy  of  finer  dinners  than  were  ever 
eaten  there.  The  service  throughout  was  of  a  gravity 
never  relaxed,  except  in  the  intimate  moments  of 
bringing  the  bath  in  the  morning,  when  the  news  of  the 
day  before  and  the  coming  events  of  the  present  day 
were  suggestively  yet  respectfully  discussed. 

The  tenants  of  the  drawing-room  floor  owed  some  of 
their  most  fortunate  inspirations  in  sight-seeing  to  the 
suggestions  of  the  landlord,  whose  apartments  I  would 
in  no  wise  leave  to  depreciatory  conjecture.  There  was, 
indeed,  always  a  jagged  wound  in  the  entry  wall  made 
by  some  envious  trunk;  but  there  was  nothing  of  the 
frowziness,  the  shabbiness  of  many  of  those  houses  in 
the  streets  neighboring  Mayfair  where  many  Americans 
are  eager  to  pay  twice  the  fee  demanded  in  this  house 
on  the  borders  of  Belgravia. 

The  Americans  I  am  imagining  had  first  carried  on 
their  search  in  those  genteel  regions,  which  could  hardly 
have  looked  their  best  in  the  last  moments  of  prepara 
tion  before  the  season  began.  The  house-cleaning  which 
went  on  in  all  of  them  was  no  more  hurried  than  the  ad 
vance  of  the  slow  English  spring  outside,  where  the  buds 
appeared  after  weeks  of  hesitation,  and  the  leaves  un 
folded  themselves  at  long  leisure,  and  the  blossoms  de 
liberated  in  dreamy  doubt  whether  they  had  not  better 
stay  in  than  come  out.  Day  after  day  found  the  lodg 
ing-houses  with  their  carpets  up,  and  their  furniture 
inverted,  and  their  hallways  and  stairways  reeking 
from  slop-pails  or  smelling  from  paint-pots,  and  with 
no  visible  promise  of  readiness  for  lodgers.  They  were 

79 


LONDON   FILMS 

pretty  nearly  all  of  one  type.  A  young  German  or 
Swiss — there  for  the  language — came  to  the  door  in  the 
coat  he  had  not  always  got  quite  into,  and  then  sum 
moned  from  the  depths  below  a  landlord  or  landlady  to 
be  specific  about  times  and  terms,  to  show  the  rooms, 
and  conceal  the  extras.  The  entry  was  oftenest  dim 
and  narrow,  with  a  mat  sunk  into  the  floor  at  the  thresh 
old  and  worn  to  the  quick  by  the  cleansing  of  number 
less  feet;  and  an  indescribable  frowziness  prevailed  which 
imparted  itself  to  the  condition  of  widowhood  dug  up 
by  the  young  foreigner  from  the  basement.  Sometimes 
there  responded  to  his  summons  a  clerical,  an  almost 
episcopal  presence,  which  was  clearly  that  of  a  former 
butler,  unctuous  in  manner  and  person  from  long  serv 
ing.  Or  sometimes  there  would  be  something  much 
more  modern,  of  an  alert  middle-age  or  wary  youth; 
in  every  case  the  lodging-keeper  was  skilled  far  beyond 
the  lodging-seeker  in  the  coils  of  bargaining,  and  of 
holding  in  the  background  unsurmised  charges  for 
electric  lights,  for  candles,  for  washing,  for  baths,  for 
boots,  and  for  what-know-I,  after  the  most  explicit 
declaration  that  the  first  demand  included  everything. 
Nothing  definite  could  be  evolved  but  the  fact  that 
when  the  season  began,  or  after  the  first  of  May  the  rent 
would  be  doubled. 

The  treaty  usually  took  place  in  the  dishevelled 
drawing-room,  after  a  round  of  the  widely  parted  cham 
bers,  where  frowzy  beds,  covered  with  frowzy  white 
counterpanes,  stood  on  frowzy  carpets  or  yet  frowzier 
mattings,  and  dusty  windows  peered  into  purblind 
courts.  A  vulgar  modernity  coexisted  with  a  shabby 
antiquity  in  the  appointments;  a  mouldering  wall 
showed  its  damp  through  the  smart  tastelessness  of 
recent  paper;  the  floor  reeled  under  a  combination  of 

80 


By  courtesy  of  London,  Stereoscopic  and  Photograph  Company 

ST.    PAUL'S    CATHEDRAL 


THE    MEANS    OF    SOJOURN 

pseudo-aesthetic  rugs.  The  drawing-room  expected  to 
be  the  dining-room  also,  and  faintly  breathed  the  stale- 
ness  of  the  meals  served  in  it.  If  the  front  windows 
often  opened  on  a  cheerful  street,  the  back  windows 
had  no  air  but  that  of  the  sunless  spaces  which  successive 
architectural  exigencies  had  crowded  with  projecting 
cupboards,  closets,  and  lattices,  above  basement  sky 
lights  which  the  sky  seldom  lighted.  The  passages 
and  the  stairs  were  never  visible  except  after  dark;  even 
then  the  foot  rather  than  the  eye  found  the  way.  Yet, 
once  settled  in  such  a  place,  it  developed  possibilities  of 
comfort,  of  quiet,  of  seclusion,  which  the  hardiest  hope 
fulness  could  not  have  forecast.  The  meals  came  up 
and  could  be  eaten;  the  coffee,  which  nearly  all  English 
hotels  have  good  and  nearly  all  English  lodgings  bad, 
could  be  exchanged  for  tea;  the  service  was  always  well- 
intentioned,  and  often  more,  and  except  that  you  paid 
twice  as  much  as  it  all  seemed  worth,  you  were  not  so 
ill-used  as  you  might  have  been. 

It  is  said  that  the  whole  system,  if  not  on  its  last  legs, 
is  unsteady  on  its  feet  from  the  competition  of  the  great 
numbers  of  those  large,  new,  reasonably  cheap,  and 
admirably  managed  hotels.  Yet  the  lodging  -  houses 
remain  by  hundreds  of  thousands,  almost  by  millions, 
throughout  the  land,  and  if  the  English  are  giving  them 
up  they  are  renouncing  them  with  national  delibera 
tion.  The  most  mysterious  fact  concerning  them  is 
that  they  are,  with  all  their  multitude,  so  difficult  to 
get,  and  are  so  very  bad  when  you  have  got  them. 
Having  said  this,  I  remember  with  fond  regret  particular 
advantages  in  every  lodging  of  my  acquaintance. 


IX 

CERTAIN  TRAITS  OF  THE  LONDON   SPRINGTIME 

THE  painting -up  which  the  apartments,  as  they 
always  call  themselves,  undergo  inside  and  out,  in 
preparation  for  the  season,  is  a  rite  to  which  all  London 
bows  during  April  as  far  as  it  can  afford  it.  The  lodg 
ing-house  may  restrict  itself  to  picking  out  in  fresh 
green  its  front  door  and  window  -  frames,  or  perhaps 
reddening  its  area  railing;  but  private  houses  pretend 
ing  to  be  smart  clothe  themselves  from  eave  to  base 
ment  in  coats  of  creamy  white,  or  other  blond  tints  sus 
ceptible  of  the  soonest  harm  from  the  natural  and 
artificial  climates  of  London.  While  the  paint  is  fresh, 
or  "wet,"  the  word  by  which  you  are  warned  from  its 
contact  everywhere,  it  is  undeniably  pleasing;  it  gives 
the  gray  town  an  air  of  girlish  innocence,  and,  with  the 
boxes  of  brilliant  flowers  at  every  window-sill,  promises 
a  gayety  which  the  season  realizes  in  rather  unusual 
measure.  It  is  said  that  the  flowers  at  the  windows 
must  be  renewed  every  month,  against  the  blight  of 
the  London  smoke  and  damp,  and,  if  the  paint  cannot 
be  renewed  so  often,  it  is  of  perhaps  a  little  more  durable 
beauty.  For  a  month  of  preparation,  while  the  house- 
fronts  in  the  fashionable  streets  are  escaladed  by  painters 
emulous  of  the  perils  of  the  samphire-gatherer's  dreadful 
trade,  the  air  is  filled  with  the  clean,  turpentiny  odor, 
and  the  eye  is  pleased  with  the  soft  colors  in  which  the 

82 


TRAITS    OF   THE    LONDON    SPRINGTIME 

grimy  walls  remember  the  hopes  of  another  spring,  of 
another  London  season. 

If  the  American's  business  or  pleasure  takes  him  out 
of  town  on  the  edge  of  the  season  and  brings  him  back 
well  over  its  border,  he  will  have  an  agreeable  effect 
from  his  temporary  absence.  He  will  find  the  throngs 
he  left  visibly  greater  and  notably  smarter.  Fashion 
will  have  got  in  its  work,  and  the  streets,  the  pavements, 
the  parks  will  have  responded  with  a  splendor,  a  gayety 
earlier  unknown.  The  passing  vehicles  will  be  more 
those  of  pleasure  and  not  so  much  those  of  business;  the 
passing  feet  will  be  oftener  those  going  to  luncheon  and 
afternoon  tea,  and  not  so  solely  those  hurrying  to  or 
lagging  from  the  toils  of  the  day.  Even  the  morning 
trains  that  bring  the  customary  surburbans  seem  to 
arrive  with  multitudes  fresher  and  brighter  than  those 
which  arrived  before  the  season  began.  I  do  not  know 
whether  it  was  in  tribute  to  the  joyful  time  that  a  house 
maid,  whom  I  one  morning  noted  scrubbing  down  and 
whitening  up  the  front  steps  of  a  stately  mansion,  wore 
a  long,  black  train  and  a  bolero  hat  and  jacket,  and  I  do 
not  say  that  this  is  the  usual  dress  of  the  London  house 
maid,  poor  thing,  in  the  London  season,  when  putting 
on  them  the  scrupulous  effect  of  cleanliness  which  all 
the  London  steps  wear  in  the  morning.  One  might  as 
well  pretend  that  the  may  is  consciously  white  and  red 
on  all  the  hawthorns  of  the  parks  and  squares  in  honor 
of  the  season.  The  English  call  this  lovely  blossom  so 
with  no  apparent  literary  association,  but  the  American 
must  always  feel  as  if  he  were  quoting  the  name  from 
an  old  ballad.  It  gives  the  mighty  town  a  peculiarly 
appealing  rustic  charm,  and  it  remains  in  bloom  al 
most  as  long  as  its  namesake  month  endures.  But  that 
is  no  great  wonder :  when  a  tree  has  worked  as  hard  as  a 

83 


LONDON    FILMS 

tree  must  in  England  to  get  its  blossoms  out,  it  is  natu 
rally  in  no  hurry  to  drop  them;  it  likes  to  keep  them  on 
for  weeks. 

The  leaves,  by  the  beginning  of  June,  were  in  their 
silken  fulness;  the  trees  stood  densely,  softly,  darkly 
rounded  in  the  dim  air,  and  they  did  not  begin  to  shed 
their  foliage  till  almost  two  months  later.  But  I  think 
I  had  never  so  exquisite  a  sense  of  the  loveliness  of  the 
London  trees  as  one  evening  in  the  grounds  of  a  country 
club  not  so  far  out  of  London  as  not  to  have  London 
trees  in  its  grounds.  They  were  mostly  oaks,  beeches, 
and  sycamores;  they  frequented  the  banks  of  a  wide, 
slow  water,  which  could  not  be  called  a  stream,  and  they 
hung  like  a  palpable  sort  of  clouds  in  the  gathering  mists. 
The  mists,  in  fact,  seemed  of  much  the  same  density 
as  the  trees,  and  I  should  be  bolder  than  I  like  if  I  de 
clared  which  the  birds  were  singing  their  vespers  in. 
There  was  one  thrush  imitating  a  nightingale,  which  I 
think  must  have  been  singing  in  the  heart  of  the  mist, 
and  which  probably  mistook  it  for  a  tree  of  like  sub 
stance.  It  was  having,  apparently,  the  time  of  its  life; 
and  really  the  place  was  enchanting,  with  its  close- 
cropped,  daisy  -  starred  lawns,  and  the  gay  figures  of 
polo-players  coming  home  from  a  distant  field  in  the 
pale  dusk  of  a  brilliant  day  of  early  June. 

The  birds  are  heard  everywhere  in  London  through 
that  glowing  month,  and  their  singing  would  drown 
the  roar  of  the  omnibuses  and  the  clatter  of  the  cab- 
horses'  hoofs  if  anything  could.  The  little  gardens 
of  the  houses  back  together  and  form  innumerable 
shelters  and  pleasaunces  for  them.  The  simple  beauty 
of  these  umbrageous  places  is  unimaginable  to  the 
American  city-dweller,  who  never  sees  anything  but 
clothes-lines  in  blossom  from  his  back  windows;  but 

84 


TRAITS    OF   THE    LONDON    SPRINGTIME 

they  exist  nearly  everywhere  in  London,  and  a  more 
spacious  privacy  can  always  be  secured  where  two  houses 
throw  their  gardens  together,  as  sometimes  happens. 

The  humblest,  or  at  least  the  next  to  the  humblest, 
London  house  has  some  leafy  breathing-place  behind  it 
where  the  birds  may  nest  and  sing,  and  our  lodging  in 
the  street  which  was  almost  Belgravian  was  not  without 
its  tree  and  its  feathered  inmates.  When  the  first  really 
warm  days  came  (and  they  came  at  the  time  appointed 
by  the  poets),  the  feathered  hostess  of  the  birds,  in  a 
coop  under  the  tree,  laid  an  egg  in  honor  of  her  friends 
building  overhead.  This  was  a  high  moment  of  triumph 
for  the  landlord's  whole  family.  He  happened  to  be 
making  some  very  gravelly  garden-beds  along  the  wall 
when  the  hen  proclaimed  her  achievement,  and  he  called 
his  children  and  their  mother  to  rejoice  with  him.  His 
oldest  boy  ran  up  a  flag  in  honor  of  the  event,  and  his 
lodgers  came  to  the  window  to  enjoy  the  scene,  as  I  am 
sure  the  royal  princess  would  have  done  if  she  had  been 
taking  tea  there  that  afternoon. 

He  was  a  good  man,  that  landlord,  and  a  kind  man, 
and  though  his  aspirates  were  dislocated,  his  heart, 
however  he  miscalled  it,  was  in  the  right  place.  We 
had  many  improving  conversations,  by  which  I  profited 
more  than  he;  and  he  impressed  me,  like  Englishmen  of 
every  class,  as  standing  steadfastly  but  unaggressively 
upon  the  rights  of  his  station.  In  England  you  feel  that 
you  cannot  trespass  upon  the  social  demesne  of  the 
lowliest  without  being  unmistakably  warned  off  the 
premises.  The  social  inferiors  have  a  convention  of 
profound  respect  for  the  social  superiors,  but  it  some 
times  seemed  provisional  only,  a  mask  which  they  ex 
pected  one  day  to  drop;  yet  this  may  have  been  one  of 
those  errors  which  foreigners  easily  make.  What  is 

85 


.    LONDON    FILMS 

certain  is  that  the  superior  had  better  keep  to  his  place, 
as  the  inferior  keeps  to  his.  Across  the  barrier  the 
classes  can  and  do  exchange  much  more  kindness  than 
we  at  a  distance  imagine;  and  I  do  not  see  why  this 
is  not  a  good  time  to  say  that  the  English  manner  to 
dependants  is  beyond  criticism.  The  consideration  for 
them  seems  unfailing;  they  are  asked  to  do  things  if 
they  please,  and  they  are  invariably  and  distinctly 
thanked  for  the  smallest  service.  There  are  no  doubt 
exceptions  to  the  kindness  which  one  sees,  but  I  did  not 
see  the  exceptions.  The  social  machinery  has  so  little 
play  that  but  for  the  lubrication  of  these  civilities  the 
grind  of  class  upon  class  might  be  intolerable.  With 
us  in  America  there  is  no  love  lost  between  rich  and 
poor;  unless  the  poor  are  directly  and  obviously  depen 
dent  on  the  rich  our  classes  can  be  frankly  brutal  with 
one  another,  as  they  never  seem  in  England.  Very 
possibly  that  perfect  English  manner  from  superiors 
is  also  a  convention,  like  the  respect  of  the  inferiors, 
but  it  is  a  becoming  one. 

This  is  getting  rather  far  away  from  the  birds,  not  to 
say  my  landlord,  who  told  me  that  when  he  first  took 
that  house  a  flock  of  starlings  used  to  visit  him  in  the 
spring.  He  did  not  tell  me  that  his  little  house  stood 
in  the  region  of  Nell  Gwynne's  mulberry-gardens;  his 
knowledge  was  of  observation,  not  of  reading;  and  he 
was  a  gossip  only  about  impersonal  things.  Concerning 
his  lodgers  he  was  as  a  grave  for  silence,  and  I  fancy 
this  is  the  strict  etiquette  of  his  calling,  enforced  by  the 
national  demand  for  privacy.  He  did,  indeed,  speak 
once  of  a  young  German  lodger  whom  he  had  kept 
from  going  to  a  garden-party  in  full  evening-dress,  but 
the  incident  was  of  a  remoteness  which  excused  its 
mention.  What  had  impressed  him  in  it  was  the  for- 

86 


TRAITS    OF   THE    LONDON    SPRINGTIME 

eigner's  almost  tearful  gratitude  when  he  came  home 
and  acknowledged  that  he  had  found  everybody  in  the 
sort  of  frock-coat  which  the  landlord  had  conjured  him 
to  wear. 

While  the  may  was  still  hesitating  on  the  hawthorns 
whether  to  come  out,  there  were  plum  and  peach  trees 
in  the  gardens  which  emulated  the  earlier  daring  of  the 
almonds.  Plums  do  ripen  in  England,  of  course;  the 
greengages  that  come  there  after  they  have  ceased  to 
come  from  France  are  as  good  as  our  own  when  the 
curculio  does  not  get  them;  but  the  efflorescence  of  the 
peaches  and  almonds  is  purely  gratuitous;  they  never 
fruit  in  the  London  air  unless  against  some  exceptionally 
sun-warmed  wall,  and  even  then  I  fancy  the  chances 
are  against  them.  Perhaps  the  fruits  of  the  fields  and 
orchards,  if  not  of  the  streets,  would  do  better  in  Eng 
land  if  the  nights  were  warmer.  The  days  are  often 
quite  hot,  but  after  dusk  the  temperature  falls  so  de 
cidedly  that  even  in  that  heated  fortnight  in  July  a 
blanket  or  two  were  never  too  much.  In  the  spring  a 
day  often  began  mellowly  enough,  but  by  the  end  of 
the  afternoon  it  had  grown  pinched  and  acrid. 


SOME    VOLUNTARY    AND    INVOLUNTARY 
SIGHT-SEEING 

I  HAD  a  very  good  will  towards  all  the  historic 
temples  in  London,  and  I  hope  that  this,  with  the 
fact  that  I  had  seen  them  before,  will  pass  for  my  ex 
cuse  in  not  going  promptly  to  revere  them.  I  indeed 
had  some  self-reproaches  with  regard  to  St.  Paul's,  of 
which  I  said  to  myself  I  ought  to  see  it  again;  there 
might  be  an  emotion  in  it.  I  passed  and  repassed  it, 
till  I  could  bear  it  no  longer,  and  late  one  afternoon  I 
entered  just  in  time  to  be  turned  out  with  half  a  score  of 
other  tardy  visitors  who  had  come  at  the  closing  hour. 
After  this  unavailing  visit,  the  necessity  of  going  again 
established  itself  in  me,  and  I  went  repeatedly,  choosing, 
indeed,  rainy  days  when  I  could  not  well  go  elsewhere, 
and  vengefully  rejoicing,  when  I  went,  in  the  inadequacy 
of  its  hugeness  and  the  ugliness  of  its  monuments. 

Some  sense  of  my  mood  I  may  impart,  if  I  say  that 
St.  Paul's  always  seemed  a  dispersed  and  interrupted 
St.  Peter's  in  its  structure  and  decoration,  and  a  very 
hard,  unsympathetic,  unappealing  Westminster  Abbey 
in  its  mortuary  records.  The  monuments  of  the  Abbey 
are  often  grotesque  enough,  but  where  they  are  so  they 
are  in  the  taste  of  times  far  enough  back  to  have  become 
rococo  and  charming.  I  do  not  mind  a  bronze  Death 
starting  out  of  a  marble  tomb  and  threatening  me 

88 


VOLUNTARY  AND  INVOLUNTARY  SIGHT-SEEING 

with  his  dart,  if  he  is  a  Death  of  the  seventeenth  century; 
but  I  do  very  much  mind  the  heavy  presence  of  the 
Fames  or  Britannias  of  the  earlier  nineteenth  century 
celebrating  in  dull  allegory  the  national  bereavement 
in  the  loss  of  military  and  naval  heroes  who  fell  when 
the  national  type  was  least  able  to  inspire  grief  with 
an  artistic  expression.  The  statesmen,  the  ecclesiastics, 
the  jurists,  look  all  of  a  like  period,  and  stand  about 
in  stone  with  no  more  interest  for  the  spectator  than 
the  Fames  or  the  Britannias. 

The  imagination  stirs  at  nothing  in  St.  Paul's  so  much 
as  at  that  list  of  London  bishops,  which,  if  you  are  so 
lucky  as  to  come  on  it  by  chance  where  it  is  inscribed 
beside  certain  windows,  thrills  you  with  a  sense  of  the 
long,  long  youth  of  that  still  unaging  England.  Bishops 
of  the  Roman  and  Briton  times,  with  their  scholarly 
Latin  names;  bishops  of  the  Saxon  and  Danish  times 
remembered  in  rough,  Northern  syllables;  bishops  of 
the  Norman  time,  with  appellations  that  again  flow 
upon  the  tongue;  bishops  of  the  English  time,  with 
designations  as  familiar  as  those  in  the  directory:  what 
a  record!  It  moves  you  more  than  any  of  those  uni 
formed  or  cloaked  images  of  warriors  and  statesmen, 
and  it  speaks  more  eloquently  of  the  infrangible  con 
tinuity,  the  unbroken  greatness  of  England. 

My  last  visit  was  paid  after  I  had  seen  so  many  other 
English  cathedrals  that  I  had  begun  to  say,  if  not  to 
think,  that  England  was  overgothicized,  and  that  I 
should  be  glad,  or  at  least  relieved,  by  something 
classicistic.  But  I  found  that  I  was  mistaken.  That 
architecture  is  alien  to  the  English  sky  and  alien  to  the 
English  faith,  which  continues  the  ancient  tradition  in 
terms  not  ceremonially  very  distinct  from  those  of 
Rome;  and  coming  freshly  from  the  minster  in  York 

89 


LONDON    FILMS 

to  the  cathedral  in  London,  I  was  aware  of  differences 
which  were  all  in  favor  of  the  elder  fane.  The  minster 
now  asserted  its  superior  majesty,  and  its  mere  magni 
tude,  the  sweep  of  its  mighty  nave,  the  bulk  of  its 
clustered  columns,  the  splendor  of  its  vast  and  lofty 
windows,  as  they  held  their  own  in  my  memory,  dwarfed 
St.  Paul's  as  much  physically  as  spiritually. 

A  great  congregation  lost  itself  in  the  broken  spaces 
of  the  London  temple,  dimmed  rather  than  illumined 
by  the  electric  blaze  in  the  choir;  a  monotonous  chanting 
filled  the  air  as  with  a  Rome  of  the  worldliest  period 
of  the  church,  and  the  sense  of  something  pagan  that 
had  arisen  again  in  the  Renaissance  was,  I  perceived, 
the  emotion  that  had  long  lain  in  wait  for  me.  St. 
Paul's,  like  St.  Peter's,  testifies  of  the  genius  of  a  man, 
not  the  spirit  of  humanity  awed  before  the  divine. 
Neither  grew  as  the  Gothic  churches  grew;  both  were 
ordered  to  be  built  after  the  plans  of  the  most  skilful 
architects  of  their  time  and  race,  and  both  are  monu 
ments  to  civilizations  which  had  outlived  mystery. 

I  no  more  escaped  a  return  to  Westminster  Abbey 
than  to  St.  Paul's,  but  I  had  from  the  first  so  profoundly 
and  thoroughly  naturalized  myself  to  the  place  that  it 
was  like  going  back  to  a  home  of  my  youth.  It  was, 
indeed,  the  earliest  home  of  my  youthful  love  of  the  old ; 
and  if  I  might  advise  any  reader  who  still  has  his  first 
visit  to  Westminster  Abbey  before  him,  I  would  counsel 
him  not  to  go  there  much  past  his  twenty-fourth  year. 
If  possible,  let  him  repair  to  the  venerable  fane  in  the 
year  1861,  and  choose  a  chill,  fair  day  of  the  English 
December,  so  short  as  to  be  red  all  through  with  a  sense 
of  the  late  sunrise  and  a  prescience  of  the  early  sunset. 
Then  he  will  know  better  than  I  could  otherwise  tell 
him  how  I  felt  in  that  august  and  beautiful  place,  and 

90 


VOLUNTARY  AND  INVOLUNTARY  SIGHT-SEEING 

how  my  heart  rose  in  my  throat  when  I  first  looked  up 
in  the  Poets'  Corner  and  read  the  words,  "  Oh,  rare  Ben 
Jonson!"  The  good  Ben  was  never  so  constantly 
rare  in  life  as  he  has  been  in  death,  and  that  I  knew  well 
enough  from  having  tried  to  read  him  in  days  when  I 
was  willing  to  try  reading  any  one.  But  I  was  meaning 
then  to  be  rare  every  moment  myself,  and  out  of  the 
riches  of  my  poetic  potentiality  I  dowered  him  with  a 
wealth  of  poetry  which  he  had  not  actually  enjoyed; 
and  in  this  generous  emotion  the  tears  came. 

I  am  not  sensible  of  having  been  grouped  with  others 
in  charge  of  a  verger,  but  a  verger  there  must  have  been, 
and  at  my  next  visit  there  must  equally  have  been  one; 
he  only  entered,  rigid,  authoritative,  unsparing,  into 
my  consciousness  at  the  third  or  fourth  visit,  widely 
separated  by  time,  when  he  marshalled  me  the  way  that 
he  was  going  with  a  flock  of  other  docile  tourists.  I 
suppose  it  would  be  possible  to  see  Westminster  Abbey 
without  a  verger,  but  I  do  not  know;  and  would  it  be 
safe?  I  imagine  he  was  there  at  my  first  and  second 
visits,  but  that  my  memory  rejected  him  as  unfit  for 
association  with  fames  and  names  made  so  much  of  in 
death  that  it  seemed  better  than  life  in  all  dignified 
particulars,  though  I  was  then  eagerly  taking  my 
chances  of  getting  along  for  a  few  centuries  on  earth. 

I  hope  I  am  not  being  severe  upon  the  verger,  for 
he  is  a  very  necessary  evil,  if  evil  at  all,  in  a  place  of 
such  manifold  and  recondite  interest;  and  in  my  next- 
to-last  visit  I  found  him  most  intelligibly  accessible  to 
my  curiosity  concerning  those  waxen  effigies  of  royalty 
which  used  to  be  carried  in  the  funeral  processions  of 
the  English  kings  and  queens.  He  bade  us  wait  till 
he  had  dismissed  all  his  flock  but  ourselves,  and  then, 
for  a  very  little  gratuitous  money,  he  took  us  into  some 

91 


LONDON   FILMS 

upper  places  where,  suddenly,  we  stood  in  the  presence 
of  Queen  Elizabeth  and  of  William  and  Mary,  as  they 
had  looked  and  dressed  in  life,  and  very  startlingly  life 
like  in  the  way  they  showed  unconscious  of  us.  Doubt 
less  there  were  others,  but  those  are  the  ones  I  recall, 
and  with  their  identity  I  felt  the  power  that  glared 
from  the  fierce,  vain,  shrewd,  masterful  face  of  Eliza 
beth,  and  the  obstinate  good  sense  and  ability  that 
dwelt  in  William's.  Possibly  I  read  their  natures  into 
them,  but  I  do  not  think  so;  and  one  could  well  wish 
that  art  had  so  preserved  all  the  great  embodiments  of 
history. 

I  hope  it  was  some  better  motive  than  the  sight 
seer's  that  at  least  partly  caused  me  to  make  myself  part 
of  the  congregation  listening  to  a  sermon  in  the  Abbey 
on  the  Sunday  afternoon  of  my  last  visit.  But  the 
stir  of  the  place's  literary  associations  began  with  the 
sight  of  Longfellow's  bust,  which  looks  so  much  like 
him,  in  the  grand  simplicity  of  his  looks,  as  he  was  when 
he  lived ;  and  then  presently  the  effigies  of  all  the  "  dear 
sons  of  memory"  began  to  reveal  themselves,  medallion 
and  bust  and  figure,  with  many  a  remembered  allegory 
and  inscription.  We  went  and  sat,  for  the  choral  ser 
vice,  under  the  bust  of  Macaulay,  and,  looking  down, 
we  found  with  a  shock  that  we  had  our  feet  upon  his 
grave.  It  might  have  been  the  wounded  sense  of 
reverence,  it  might  have  been  the  dread  of  a  longer 
sermon  than  we  had  time  for,  but  we  left  before  the 
sermon  began,  and  went  out  into  the  rather  unkempt 
little  public  garden  which  lies  by  the  Thames  in  the 
shadow  of  the  Parliament  Houses;  and  who  has  said 
the  Houses  are  not  fine?  They  are  not  a  thousand 
years  old,  but  some  day  they  will  be,  and  then  those 
who  cavilled  at  them  when  they  were  only  fifty  will  be 

92 


VOLUNTARY  AND  INVOLUNTARY  SIGHT-SEEING 

sorry.  For  my  part  I  think  them  as  Gothically  noble 
and  majestic  as  need  be.  They  are  inevitably  Gothic, 
too,  and  they  spring  from  the  river-side  as  if  they  grew 
from  the  ground  there  far  into  the  gray  sky  to  which 
their  architecture  is  native.  It  was  a  pale,  resigned 
afternoon,  with  the  languor  of  the  long,  unwonted  heat 
in  it,  which  a  recent  rain  had  slightly  abated,  and  we 
were  glad  of  a  memoriferous  property  which  it  seemed 
to  exhale.  Suddenly  in  the  midst  of  that  most  alien 
environment  we  confronted  a  pair  of  friends  from  whom 
we  had  last  parted  twenty  years  before  in  the  woods 
beside  Lake  George,  and  whose  apparition  at  once 
implied  the  sylvan  scene.  So  improbable,  so  sensa 
tional  is  life  even  to  the  most  bigoted  realist!  But  if 
it  is  so,  why  go  outside  of  it?  Our  friends  passed,  and 
we  were  in  the  shadow  of  the  Parliament  Houses  again, 
and  no  longer  in  that  of  the  forest  which  did  not  know 
it  was  Gothic. 

We  were  going  to  hang  upon  the  parapet  of  West 
minster  Bridge  for  the  view  it  offers  of  the  Houses, 
to  which  the  spacious  river  makes  itself  a  foreground 
such  as  few  pictures  or  subjects  of  pictures  enjoy  in 
this  cluttered  world;  but  first  we  gave  ourselves  the 
pleasure  of  realizing  the  statue  of  Cromwell  which  has 
somehow  found  place  where  it  belongs  in  those  stately 
precincts,  after  long,  vain  endeavors  to  ignore  his 
sovereign  mightiness.  He  was  not  much  more  a  friend 
of  Parliaments  than  Charles  whom  he  slew,  but  he  was 
such  a  massive  piece  of  English  history  that  the  void  his 
effigy  now  fills  under  the  windows  of  the  Commons 
must  have  ached  for  it  before. 

When  we  had  done  our  hanging  upon  the  parapet  of 
the  bridge  we  found  a  somewhat  reluctant  cab  and  drove 
homeward  through  the  muted  Sunday  streets.  The 

93 


LONDON   FILMS 

roar  of  the  city  was  still  there,  but  it  was  subdued;  the 
crowd  was  still  abroad,  but  it  was  an  aimless,  idle, 
shuffling  crowd.  The  air  itself  seemed  more  vacant 
than  on  week-days,  and  there  was  a  silencing  suspense 
everywhere.  The  poor  were  out  in  their  poor  best,  and 
the  children  strayed  along  the  streets  without  playing, 
or  lagged  homeward  behind  their  parents.  There  were 
no  vehicles  except  those  of  pleasure  or  convenience ;  the 
omnibuses  sent  up  their  thunder  from  afar;  our  cab- 
horse,  clapping  down  the  wooden  pavement,  was  the 
noisiest  thing  we  heard.  The  trees  in  the  squares  and 
places  hung  dull  and  tired  in  the  coolish,  dusty  atmos 
phere,  and  through  the  heart  of  the  summer  afternoon 
passed  a  presentiment  of  autumn.  These  are  subtilties 
of  experience  which,  after  all,  one  does  not  impart. 

Those  who  like,  as  I  do,  the  innocence  which  compan 
ions  the  sophistication  of  London  will  frequent  Kensing 
ton  Gardens  in  the  earlier  spring  before  the  season  has 
set  the  seal  of  supreme  interest  on  Hyde  Park.  It  then 
seems  peculiarly  the  playground  of  little  children  in 
the  care  of  their  nurses,  if  they  are  well-to-do  people's 
children,  and  in  one  another's  care  if  they  are  poor 
people's.  All  over  England  the  tenderness  of  the  little 
children  for  the  less  is  delightful.  I  remember  to  have 
seen  scarcely  any  squabbling,  and  I  saw  abundance  of 
caressing.  Small  girls,  even  small  boys,  lug  babies  of 
almost  their  own  weight  and  size,  and  fondle  them  as  if 
it  were  a  privilege  and  a  pleasure  to  lug  them.  This 
goes  on  in  spite  of  a  reciprocal  untidiness  which  is  in 
describable;  for  the  English  poor  children  have  the 
very  dirtiest  faces  in  the  world,  unless  the  Scotch  have 
dirtier  ones;  but  nothing,  no  spotting  or  thick  plastering 
of  filth,  can  obscure  their  inborn  sweetness.  I  think, 
perhaps,  they  wash  up  a  little  when  they  come  to  play 

94 


VOLUNTARY  AND  INVOLUNTARY  SIGHT-SEEING 

in  Kensington  Gardens,  to  sail  their  ships  on  its  placid 
waters  and  tumble  on  its  grass.  When  they  enter  the 
palace,  to  look  at  the  late  queen's  dolls  and  toys,  as 
they  do  in  troops,  they  are  commonly  in  charge  of  their 
teachers;  and  their  raptures  of  loyalty  in  the  presence 
of  those  reminders  that  queens,  too,  must  have  once 
been  little  girls  are  beautiful  to  behold,  and  are  doubtless 
as  genuine  as  those  of  their  elders  in  the  historical  and 
political  associations.  Since  William  III.  built  the 
palace  and  laid  out  the  gardens  that  he  might  dwell 
within  easy  reach  of  his  capital,  but  out  of  its  smoke 
and  din,  the  place  has  not  lost  the  character  which  his 
homely  wish  impressed  upon  it,  and  it  is  especially 
sweet  and  commendable  because  of  its  relation  to  the 
good  Victoria's  childhood.  One  does  not  forget  "  great 
Anna's  "  drinking  tea  there  in  the  Orangery  so  nobly  de 
signed  for  her  by  Wren,  but  the  plain  old  palace  is 
dearest  because  Victoria  spent  so  many  of  her  early 
days  in  it,  and  received  there  the  awful  summons  lit 
erally  to  rise  from  her  dreams  and  come  and  be  queen 
of  the  mightiest  realm  under  the  sun.  No  such  stroke 
of  poetry  is  possible  to  our  system;  we  have  not  yet 
provided  even  for  the  election  of  young  girls  to  the 
presidency;  and  though  we  may  prefer  our  prosaical 
republican  conditions,  we  must  still  feel  the  charm  of 
such  an  incident  in  the  mother  monarchy. 

The  Temple  was  another  of  the  places  that  I  did  not 
think  I  should  visit  again,  because  I  had  so  pleasant 
and  perfect  a  memory  of  it,  which  I  feared  to  impair. 
More  than  a  score  of  years  before  I  had  drunk  tea  in  the 
chambers  of  some  young  leader-writing  barrister,  and 
then  went  out  and  wandered  about  in  the  wet,  for  it 
was  raining  very  diligently.  I  cannot  say,  now,  just 
where  my  wanderings  took  me;  but,  of  course,  it  was 

95 


LONDON   FILMS 

down  into  the  gardens  sloping  towards  the  river.  In  a 
way  the  first  images  of  places  always  remain,  however 
blurred  and  broken,  and  the  Temple  gardens  were  a 
dim  and  fractured  memory  in  the  retrospect  as  I  next 
saw  them.  It  needed  all  the  sunshine  of  my  September 
day  to  unsadden  them,  not  from  the  rainy  gloom  in 
which  I  had  left  them  then,  but  from  the  pensive  asso 
ciations  of  the  years  between.  Yet  such  sunshine  as 
that  can  do  much,  and  I  found  it  restoring  me  to  my 
wonted  gayety  as  soon  as  we  got  out  of  our  four-wheeler 
after  our  drive  from  the  Thames  Embankment  and  be 
gan  to  walk  up  towards  the  Temple  Church.  I  will  not 
ask  the  reader  to  go  over  the  church  with  us ;  I  will  mere 
ly  have  him  note  a  curious  fact  regarding  those  effigies 
of  the  crusaders  lying  cross-legged  in  the  pavement 
of  the  circle  to  which  one  enters.  According  to  the 
strong,  the  irresistible  conviction  of  one  of  our  party, 
these  crusaders  had  distinctly  changed  their  posture 
since  she  saw  them  first.  It  was  not  merely  that  they 
had  uncrossed  their  legs  and  crossed  them  another  way, 
or  some  such  small  matter;  but  that  now  they  lay  side 
by  side,  whereas  formerly  they  had  better  accommo 
dated  themselves  to  the  architectural  design,  and  lain 
in  a  ring  with  their  long-pointed  toes  pointing  inward 
to  the  centre.  Why  they  should  have  changed,  we 
could  not  understand;  the  verger  said  they  had  not; 
but  he  was  a  dim,  discouraged  intelligence,  bent  chiefly 
in  a  limp  sort  on  keeping  the  door  locked  so  that  people 
could  not  get  away  without  his  help,  and  must  either 
fee  him,  or  indecently  deny  him.  The  Temple  Church, 
indeed,  is  by  no  means  the  best  of  the  Temple.  Cun 
ningham  says  that  the  two  edifices  most  worth  visiting 
are  the  church  and  the  Middle  Temple  Hall,  which  I 
now  preferred  luxuriously  to  leave  in  my  remembrances 

96 


VOLUNTARY  AND  INVOLUNTARY  SIGHT-SEEING 

of  1882,  and  to  idle  about  the  grounds  with  my  party, 
straying  through  the  quiet  thoroughfares  and  into  the 
empty  courts,  and  envying,  not  very  actively,  the 
lodgers  in  the  delightfully  dull-looking  old  brick  dwell 
ings.  I  do  not  know  just  what  Templars  are,  in  this 
day,  but  I  am  told  they  are  practically  of  both  sexes, 
and  that  when  married  they  are  allowed  to  domesticate 
themselves  in  these  buildings  in  apartments  sublet  to 
them  by  Templars  of  one  sex.  It  is  against  the  law, 
but  conformable  to  usage,  and  the  wedded  pairs  are 
subject  only  to  a  semicentennial  ejection,  so  that  I  do 
not  know  where  a  young  literary  couple  could  more 
charmingly  begin  their  married  life.  Perhaps  children 
would  be  a  scandal;  but  they  would  be  very  safe  in  the 
Temple  paths  and  on  the  Temple  lawns.  At  one  house, 
a  girl  was  vaguely  arriving  with  a  band-box  and  parcels, 
and  everything  in  the  Temple  seemed  of  a  faint,  remote 
date;  in  the  heart  of  a  former  century,  the  loud  crash 
of  our  period  came  to  us  through  the  Strand  gate  soft 
ened  to  a  mellow  roar.  The  noise  was  not  great  enough, 
we  noted,  to  interrupt  the  marble  gentleman  in  court 
dress  and  full-bottomed  wig,  elegantly  reclining  on  the 
top  of  his  tomb  in  a  niche  of  the  wall  near  Goldsmith's 
grave,  and  leaning  forward  with  one  hand  extended 
as  if,  in  the  spirit  of  the  present  entente  cordiale,  he  was 
calling  our  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  garlands  and 
streamers  of  the  Virginian-creeper  dangling  from  the 
walls  about  him  were  in  the  mother-clime  of  a  real  Amer 
ican  redness. 

It  is  proof  of  the  manifold  interest  of  London,  or  else 
of  our  own  inadequacy  to  our  opportunities,  that  in  all 
our  sojourns  we  had  never  yet  visited  what  is  left  of  that 
famous  Whitehall,  so  tragically  memorable  of  the  death 
of  Charles  I.  The  existing  edifice  is  only  the  noble 

97 


LONDON    FILMS 

remnant  of  that  ancient  palace  of  the  English  kings 
which  the  fire  of  1697  spared,  as  if  such  a  masterpiece 
of  Inigo  Jones  would  be  the  fittest  witness  of  its  highest, 
saddest  event.  Few,  if  any,  of  the  tremendous  issues 
of  history  are  so  nearly  within  seeing  and  touching  as 
that  on  which  the  windows  of  Whitehall  still  look,  and  I 
must  count  that  last  day  of  our  September  in  London 
as  spent  in  such  sort  as  to  be  of  unsurpassed  if  not  un 
rivalled  impression,  because  of  the  visit  which  we  then 
so  tardily  paid  to  the  place,  and  so  casually  that  we 
had  almost  not  paid  it  at  all. 

The  Banquetting  House  is  now  a  sort  of  military  and 
naval  museum;  with  the  swords  and  saddles  and  uni 
forms  and  other  equipments  of  divers  English  heroes 
in  glass  cases,  and  models  of  battle-ships,  and  of  the  two 
most  famous  English  battles,  likewise  under  glass.  I 
was  not  so  vain  of  my  reading  about  battles  as  not 
to  be  glad  of  seeing  how  the  men-of-war  deployed  at 
Trafalgar;  or  how  the  French  and  English  troops  were 
engaged  at  Waterloo  (with  the  smoke  coming  out  of 
the  cannons'  mouths  in  puffs  of  cotton- wool),  when 
Bliicher  modestly  appeared  at  one  corner  of  the  plan 
in  time  to  save  the  day.  "But  we  should  'ave  'ad  it, 
without  'im?"  a  fellow  sight-seer  of  local  birth  anxiously 
inquired  of  the  custodian.  "Oh,  we  should  'ave  'ad 
the  victory,  anyway,"  the  custodian  reassured  him,  and 
they  looked  together  at  some  trophies  of  the  Boer  war 
with  a  patriotic  interest  which  we  could  not  share.  I  do 
not  know  whether  they  shared  my  psychological  inter 
est  in  that  apposition  of  Napoleon  and  of  Nelson  which, 
in  this  place,  as  in  several  others  in  England,  invests 
the  spiritual  squalor  of  war-memories  with  the  glamour 
of  two  so  supremely  poetic,  yet  so  different  personalities. 
Whatever  other  heroes  may  have  been,  these  dreamers 

98 


VOLUNTARY  AND  INVOLUNTARY  SIGHT-SEEING 

in  their  ideals  shed  such  a  light  upon  the  sad  business  of 
their  lives  as  almost  to  ennoble  it.  One  feels  that  with 
a  little  more  qualification  on  the  creative  side  they  could 
have  been  literary  men,  not  of  the  first  order,  perhaps, 
but,  say,  historical  novelists. 

There  is  some  question  among  other  authorities 
which  window  of  the  Banquetting  House  the  doomed 
king  passed  through  upon  the  scaffold  to  the  block;  but 
the  custodian  had  no  doubts.  He  would  not  allow  a 
choice  of  windows,  and  as  to  a  space  broken  through 
the  wall,  he  had  never  heard  of  it.  But  we  were  so 
well  satisfied  with  his  window  as  to  shrink  involunta 
rily  from  it,  and  from  the  scene  without  whose  eternal 
substance  showed  through  the  shadowy  illusion  of  pass 
ing  hansoms  and  omnibuses,  like  the  sole  fact  of  the 
street,  the  king's  voice  rising  above  the  noises  in  ten 
der  caution  to  a  heedless  witness,  "Have  a  care  of  the 
axe;  have  a  care,"  and  then  gravely  to  the  headsman: 
"When  I  stretch  out  my  hands  so,  then —  The 
drums  were  ordered  beaten,  so  that  we  could  not  hear 
more;  and  we  went  out,  and  crossed  among  the  cabs 
and  'busses  to  the  horse  -  guards  sitting  shrunken  on 
their  steeds,  and  passed  between  them  into  the  park  be 
yond  where  the  beds  of  flowers  spread  their  soft  au 
tumnal  bloom  in  the  low  sun  of  the  September  day. 


XI 
GLIMPSES   OF  THE   LOWLY   AND   THE   LOWLIER 

I  LIKED  walking  through  St.  James's  and  through 
Green  Park,  especially  in  the  late  afternoon  when 
the  tired  poor  began  to  droop  upon  the  benches,  and, 
long  before  the  spring  damp  was  out  of  the  ground,  to 
strew  themselves  on  the  grass,  and  sleep,  face  down 
ward,  among  its  odorous  roots.  There  was  often  the 
music  of  military  bands  to  which  wide-spreading  audi 
ences  of  the  less  pretentious  sort  listened ;  in  St.  James's 
there  were  seats  along  the  borders  of  the  ponds  where, 
while  the  chill  evening  breeze  crisped  the  water,  a  good 
deal  of  energetic  courting  went  on.  Besides,  both  were 
in  the  immediate  neighborhood  of  certain  barracks 
where  there  was  always  a  chance  of  military,  and  were 
hard  by  Buckingham  Palace  with  its  chances  of  royalty. 
But  the  resort  of  the  poorer  sort  of  pleasure-seekers 
is  eminently  Battersea  Park,  to  which  we  drove  one  hot, 
hot  Sunday  afternoon  in  late  July,  conscience-stricken 
that  we  had  left  it  so  long  out  of  our  desultory  doing  and 
seeing.  It  was  full  of  the  sort  of  people  we  had  expected 
to  find  in  it,  but  these  people  though  poor  were  not 
tattered.  The  Londoner,  of  whatever  class  is  apt  to  be 
better  dressed  than  the  New-Yorker  of  the  same  class, 
and  the  women  especially  make  a  bolder  attempt  than 
ours,  if  not  so  well  advised,  at  gayety.  They  had  put 
on  the  best  and  finest  they  had,  in  Battersea  Park,  and 

100 


GLIMPSES  OF  THE  LOWLY  AND  THE  LOWLIER 

if  it  was  not  the  most  fitting  still  they  wore  it.  The 
afternoon  was  sultry  to  breathlessness ;  yet  a  young 
mother  with  a  heavy  baby  in  her  arms  sweltered  along 
in  the  splendor  of  a  purple  sack  of  thick  plush;  she 
was  hot,  yes;  but  she  had  it  on.  The  young  girls  emu 
lated  as  well  as  they  could  the  airy  muslins  and  silks  in 
which  the  great  world  was  flitting  and  flirting  at  the 
same  hour  in  the  closes  of  Hyde  Park,  and  if  the  young 
fellows  with  these  poor  girls  had  not  the  distinction  of 
the  swells  in  the  prouder  parade  they  at  least  equalled 
them  in  their  aberrations  from  formality. 

There  was  not  much  shade  in  Battersea  Park  for  the 
people  to  sit  under,  but  there  was  almost  a  superabun 
dance  of  flowers  in  glaring  beds,  and  there  were  pieces 
of  water,  where  the  amateur  boatman  could  have  the 
admiration  of  watchers,  two  or  three  deep,  completely 
encircling  the  ponds.  To  watch  them  and  to  walk  up 
and  down  the  shadeless  aisles  of  shrubbery,  to  sit  on 
the  too  sunny  benches,  and  to  resort  in  extreme  cases 
to  the  tea-house  which  offered  them  ices  as  well  as  tea, 
seemed  to  be  the  most  that  the  frequenters  of  Battersea 
Park  could  do.  We  ourselves  ordered  tea,  knowing  the 
quality  and  quantity  of  the  public  English  ice,  which  is 
so  very  minute  that  you  think  it  will  not  be  enough,  but 
which  when  you  taste  it  is  apt  to  be  more  than  you  want. 
The  spectacle  of  our  simple  refection  was  irresistible,  and 
a  crowd  of  envious  small  boys  thronged  the  railing  that 
parted  us  from  the  general  public,  till  the  spectacle  of 
their  hungry  interest  became  intolerable.  We  con 
sulted  with  the  waiter,  who  entered  seriously  into  our 
question  as  to  the  moral  and  social  effect  of  sixpence 
worth  of  buns  on  those  boys;  he  decided  that  it  would 
at  least  not  form  an  example  ruinous  to  the  peace  of  his 
tea-house;  and  he  presently  appeared  with  a  paper  bag 

101 


LONDON    FILMS 

that  seemed  to  hold  half  a  bushel  of  buns.  Yet  even 
half  a  bushel  of  buns  will  not  go  round  the  boys  in  Bat- 
tersea  Park,  and  we  had  to  choose  as  honest  a  looking 
boy  as  there  was  in  the  foremost  rank,  and  pledge  him 
to  a  just  division  of  the  buns  intrusted  him  in  bulk,  and 
hope,  as  he  ran  off  down  an  aisle  of  the  shrubbery  with 
the  whole  troop  at  his  heels,  that  he  would  be  faithful 
to  the  trust. 

So  very  mild  are  the  excitements,  so  slight  the  inci 
dents,  so  safe  and  tame  the  adventures  of  modern 
travel!  I  am  almost  ashamed  when  I  think  what  a 
swashing  time  a  romantic  novelist,  or  a  person  of  real 
imagination  would  have  been  having  in  London  when 
so  little  was  happening  to  me.  There  was,  indeed,  one 
night  after  dinner  wrhen  for  a  salient  moment  I  had 
hopes  of  something  different.  The  maid  had  whistled 
for  a  hansom,  and  a  hansom  had  started  for  the  door 
where  we  stood  waiting,  when  out  of  the  shadows  across 
the  way  two  figures  sprang,  boarded  the  cab,  and  bade 
the  cabman  drive  them  away  under  our  very  eyes. 
Such  a  thing,  occurring  at  almost  eleven  o'clock,  prom 
ised  a  series  of  stirring  experiences;  and  an  American 
lady,  long  resident  in  England,  encouragingly  said,  on 
hearing  of  the  outrage,  "Ah,  that's  London!"  as  if  I 
might  look  to  be  often  mishandled  by  bandits  of  the  sort; 
but  nothing  like  it  ever  befell  me  again.  In  fact  the 
security  and  gentleness  with  which  life  is  operated  in 
the  capital  of  the  world  is  one  of  the  kind  things  makes 
you  forget  its  immensity.  Your  personal  comfort  and 
safety  are  so  perfectly  assured  that  you  might  well  mis 
take  yourself  for  one  of  very  few  people  instead  of  so 
many. 

London  is  like  nature  in  its  vastness,  simplicity,  and 

102 


GLIMPSES  OF  THE  LOWLY  AND  THE  LOWLIER 

deliberation,  and  if  it  hurried  or  worried,  it  would  be 
like  the  precession  of  the  equinoxes  getting  a  move 
on,  and  would  shake  the  earth.  The  street  events 
are  few.  In  my  nine  or  ten  weeks'  sojourn,  so  largely 
spent  in  the  streets,  I  saw  the  body  of  only  one  acci 
dent  worse  than  a  cab-horse  falling;  but  that  was  early 
in  my  stay  when  I  expected  to  see  many  more.  We 
were  going  to  the  old  church  of  St.  Bartholomew,  and 
were  walking  by  the  hospital  of  the  same  name  just 
as  a  cab  drove  up  to  its  gate  bearing  the  body  of  the 
accident.  It  was  a  young  man  whose  bleeding  face 
hung  upon  his  breast  and  whose  limp  arm  another 
young  man  of  the  same  station  in  life  held  round  his 
own  neck,  to  stay  the  sufferer  on  the  seat  beside  him. 
A  crowd  was  already  following,  and  it  gathered  so 
quickly  at  the  high  iron  fence  that  the  most  censorious 
witness  could  hardly  see  with  what  clumsiness  the 
wounded  man  was  half -dragged,  half -lifted  from  the 
cab  by  the  hospital  assistants,  and  stretched  upon  the 
ground  till  he  could  be  duly  carried  into  the  hospital. 
It  may  have  been  a  casualty  of  the  many  incident  to 
alcoholism;  at  the  best  it  was  a  result  of  single  combat, 
which,  though  it  prepared  us  in  a  sort  for  the  mediaeval 
atmosphere  of  the  church,  was  yet  not  of  the  tragic 
dignity  which  would  have  come  in  the  way  of  a  more 
heroical  imagination. 

It  was  indeed  so  little  worthy  of  the  place,  however 
characteristic  of  the  observer,  that  I  made  haste  to 
forget  it  as  I  entered  the  church-yard  under  the  Nor 
man  arch  which  has  been  for  some  years  gradually 
finding  itself  in  an  adjoining  shop-wall.  The  whole 
church,  indeed,  as  now  seen,  is  largely  the  effect  (and  it 
was  one  of  the  first  effects  I  saw)  of  that  rescue  of  the 
past  from  the  present  which  is  perpetually  going  on  all 
8  103 


LONDON   FILMS 

over  England.  Till  lately  the  Lady  Chapel  and  the 
crypt  of  St.  Bartholomew  had  been  used  as  an  iron 
worker's  shop;  and  modern  life  still  pressed  close  upon  it 
in  the  houses  looking  on  the  graves  of  the  grassless 
church-yard.  With  women  at  the  windows  that  opened 
on  its  mouldy  level,  peeling  potatoes,  picking  chickens, 
and  doing  other  household  offices,  the  place  was  like 
something  out  of  Dickens,  but  something  that  yet  had 
been  cleaned  up  in  sympathy  with  the  restoration  of 
the  church,  going  on  bit  by  bit,  stone  by  stone,  arch  by 
arch,  till  the  good  monk  Rahere  (he  was  gay  rather  than 
good  before  he  turned  monk)  who  founded  the  Cister 
cian  monastery  there  in  the  twelfth  century  would 
hardly  have  missed  anything  if  he  had  returned  to  ex 
amine  the  church.  He  would  have  had  the  advantage, 
which  he  could  not  have  enjoyed  in  his  life-time,  of  his 
own  effigy  stretched  upon  his  tomb,  and  he  might  have 
been  interested  to  note,  as  we  did,  that  the  painter  Ho 
garth  had  been  baptized  in  his  church  six  hundred  years 
after  his  own  time.  His  satisfaction  in  the  still  prevalent 
Norman  architecture  might  have  been  less;  it  is  possible 
he  would  have  preferred  the  Gothic  which  was  coming  in 
when  he  went  out. 

The  interior  was  all  beautifully  sad  and  quiet,  gray, 
dim,  twilighted  as  with  the  closes  of  the  days  of  a  thou 
sand  years;  and  in  the  pale  ray  an  artist  sat  sketching  a 
stretch  of  the  clerestory.  I  shall  always  feel  a  loss  in 
not  having  looked  to  see  how  he  was  making  out,  but 
the  image  of  the  pew-opener  remains  compensatively 
with  me.  She  was  the  first  of  her  sort  to  confront  me 
in  England  with  the  question  whether  her  very  intelligent 
comment  was  conscious  knowledge,  or  mere  parrotry. 
She  was  a  little  morsel  of  a  woman,  in  a  black  alpaca 
dress,  and  a  world-old  black  bonnet,  who  spared  us  no 

104 


GLIMPSES  OF  THE  LOWLY  AND  THE  LOWLIER 

detail  of  the  church,  and  took  us  last  into  the  crypt,  not 
long  rescued  from  the  invasive  iron-worker,  but  now 
used  as  a  mortuary  chapel  for  the  poor  of  the  parish, 
which  is  still  full  of  the  poor.  The  chapel  was  equipped 
with  a  large  bier  and  tall  candles,  frankly  ready  for  any 
of  the  dead  who  might  drop  in.  The  old  countries  do 
not  affect  to  deny  death  a  part  of  experience,  as  younger 
countries  do. 

We  came  out  into  the  imperfect  circle  before  the  gate 
way  of  the  church,  and  realized  that  it  was  Smithfield, 
where  all  those  martyrs  had  perished  by  fire  that  the 
faith  of  the  world  might  live  free.  There  can  be  no 
place  where  the  past  is  more  august,  more  pathetic, 
more  appealing,  and  none  I  suppose,  where  the  activ 
ities  of  the  present,  in  view  of  it,  are  more  offensive. 
It  is  all  undermined  with  the  railways  that  bring  the 
day's  meat-provision  to  London  for  distribution  through 
out  the  city,  and  the  streets  that  centre  upon  it  swarm 
with  butchers'  wagons  laden  with  every  kind  and  color 
of  carnage,  prevalently  the  pallor  of  calves'  heads, 
which  seem  so  to  abound  in  England  that  it  is  wonderful 
any  calves  have  them  on  still.  The  wholesale  market 
covers  I  know  not  what  acreage,  and  if  you  enter  at 
some  central  point,  you  find  yourself  amid  endless 
prospectives  of  sides,  flitches,  quarters,  and  whole  car 
casses,  and  fantastic  vistas  of  sausages,  blood-puddings, 
and  the  like  artistic  fashionings  of  the  raw  material, 
so  that  you  come  away  wishing  to  live  a  vegetarian  ever 
after. 

The  emotions  are  not  at  one's  bidding,  and  if  one  calls 
upon  them,  they  are  very  apt  not  to  come.  I  promised 
myself  some  very  signal  ones,  of  a  certain  type,  from 
going  to  the  Sunday  market  of  the  Jews  in  what  was 
once  Petticoat  Lane,  but  now,  with  the  general  cleaning 

105 


LONDON  FILMS 

Up  and  clearing  out  of  the  slums,  has  got  itself  called 
by  some  much  finer  and  worthier  name.  But,  really,  I 
had  seen  much  Jewisher  things  in  Hester  Street,  on  our 
own  East  Side.  The  market  did  not  begin  so  early  as  I 
had  been  led  to  expect  it  would.  The  blazing  forenoon 
of  my  visit  was  more  than  half  gone,  and  yet  there  was 
no  clothes'  auction,  which  was  said  to  be  the  great  thing 
to  see.  But  by  nine  o'clock  there  seemed  to  be  every 
thing  else  for  sale  under  that  torrid  July  sun,  in  the  long 
booths  and  shelters  of  the  street  and  sidewalks:  meat, 
fish,  fruit,  vegetables,  glassware,  ironware,  boots  and 
shoes,  china  and  crockery,  women's  tawdry  finery, 
children's  toys,  furniture,  pictures,  succeeding  one  an 
other  indiscriminately,  old  and  new,  and  cried  off  with 
an  incessant  jargon  of  bargaining,  pierced  with  shrill 
screams  of  extortion  and  expostulation.  A  few  mild, 
slim,  young  London  policemen  sauntered,  apparently 
unseeing,  unhearing,  among  the  fevered,  nervous  Semitic 
crowd,  in  which  the  Oriental  types  were  by  no  means 
so  marked  as  in  New  York,  though  there  was  a  greater 
number  of  red  Jews  than  I  had  noted  before.  The 
most  monumental  features  of  the  scene  were  the  gor 
geous  scales  of  wrought  brass,  standing  at  intervals 
along  the  street,  and  arranged  with  seats,  like  swings, 
for  the  weighing  of  such  Hebrews  as  wished  to  know 
their  tonnage;  apparently  they  have  a  passion  for  know 
ing  it. 

The  friend  who  had  invited  me  to  this  spectacle  felt 
its  inadequacy  so  keenly,  in  spite  of  my  protests,  that 
he  questioned  the  policemen  for  some  very  squalid  or 
depraved  purlieu  that  he  might  show  me,  for  we  were  in 
the  very  heart  of  Whitechapel,  but  failing  that,  because 
the  region  had  been  so  very  much  reformed  and  cleaned 
up  since  the  dreadful  murders  there,  he  had  no  recourse 

106 


GLIMPSES  OF  THE  LOWLY  AND  THE  LOWLIER 

but  to  take  me  on  top  of  a  tram-car  and  show  me  how 
very  thoroughly  it  had  been  reformed  and  cleaned  up. 
In  a  ride  the  whole  length  of  Whitechapel  Road  to  where 
the  once  iniquitous  region  ceased  from  troubling  and  rose 
in  a  most  respectable  resurrection  as  Stepney,  with  old- 
fashioned  houses  which  looked  happy,  harmless  homes, 
I  could  only  be  bidden  imagine  avenues  of  iniquity 
branching  off  on  either  hand.  But  I  actually  saw  noth 
ing  slumlike;  indeed,  with  a  current  of  cool  east  wind 
in  our  faces,  which  the  motion  of  the  tram  reinforced,  the 
ride  was  an  experience  delightful  to  every  sense.  It  was 
significant  also  of  the  endlessness  of  London  that  as  far 
as  the  tram-car  took  us  we  seemed  as  far  as  ever  from 
the  bounds  of  the  city;  whatever  point  we  reached  there 
was  still  as  much  or  more  London  beyond. 

Perhaps  poverty  has  everywhere  become  shyer  than 
it  used  to  be  in  the  days  before  slumming  (now  itself 
of  the  past)  began  to  exploit  it.  At  any  rate,  I  thought 
that  in  my  present  London  sojourn  I  found  less  un 
blushing  destitution  than  in  the  more  hopeless  or  more 
shameless  days  of  1882-3.  In  those  days  I  remem 
ber  being  taken  by  a  friend,  much  concerned  for  my 
knowledge  of  that  side  of  London,  to  some  dreadful 
purlieu  where  I  saw  and  heard  and  smelled  things  quite 
as  bad  as  any  that  I  did  long  afterwards  in  the  over- 
tenanted  regions  of  New  York.  My  memory  is  still 
haunted  by  the  vision  of  certain  hapless  creatures  who 
fled  blinking  from  one  hole  in  the  wall  to  another,  with 
little  or  nothing  on,  and  of  other  creatures  much  in 
liquor  and  loudly  scolding  and  quarrelling,  with  squalid 
bits  of  childhood  scattered  about  underfoot,  and  vague 
shapes  of  sickness  and  mutilation,  and  all  the  time  a 
buying  and  selling  of  loathsome  second  -  hand  rags. 
In  the  midst  of  it  there  stood,  like  figures  of  a  monu- 

107 


LONDON    FILMS 

ment  erected  to  the  local  genius  of  misery  and  dis 
order,  two  burly  figures  of  half-drunken  men,  threaten 
ing  each  other  with  loud  curses  and  shaken  fists  under 
the  chin  of  a  policeman,  perfectly  impassive,  with  eyes 
dropped  upon  the  fists  which  all  but  stirred  the 
throat-latch  of  his  helmet.  When  the  men  should  strike, 
I  was  aware  that  it  would  be  his  instant  duty,  as  the 
guardian  of  the  public  peace,  to  seize  them  both  and  hale 
them  away  to  prison.  But  it  was  not  till  many  years 
afterwards  that  I  read  in  his  well-remembered  effigy 
the  allegory  of  civilization  which  lets  the  man-made 
suffering  of  men  come  to  the  worst  before  it  touches  it, 
and  acts  upon  the  axiom  that  a  pound  of  prevention  is 
worth  less  than  an  ounce  of  cure. 

I  would  very  willingly  have  seen  something  of  this 
kind  again,  but,  as  I  say,  I  happened  not  to  see  it.  I 
think  that  I  did  not  see  or  hear  even  so  much  simple 
drunkenness  in  London  as  formerly,  but  again  this  may 
have  been  merely  chance.  I  fancied  that  formerly  I 
had  passed  more  gin-palaces,  flaring  through  their  heli- 
litten  windows  into  the  night;  but  this  may  have  been 
because  I  had  become  hardened  to  gin-palaces  and  did 
not  notice  them.  Women  seemed  to  be  going  in  and 
coming  out  of  such  places  in  draggle-tailed  processions 
in  those  wicked  days;  but  now  I  only  once  saw  women 
drinking  in  a  public  house.  It  was  a  Saturday  night, 
when,  if  ever,  it  may  be  excusable  to  anticipate  the 
thirst  of  the  morrow,  for  all  through  the  Sunday  idle 
ness  it  cannot  be  slaked  enough.  It  was  a  hot  night, 
and  the  bar-room  door  stood  open,  and  within,  fronted 
by  a  crowd  of  their  loudly  talking,  deeply  drinking  men- 
kind,  those  poor  silly  things  stood  drooping  against  the 
wall  with  their  beer -pots  dangling  limply  from  their 
hands,  and  their  mouths  fallen  open  as  if  to  catch  the 

108 


GLIMPSES  OF  THE  LOWLY  AND  THE  LOWLIER 

morsels  of  wit  and  wisdom  that  dropped  from  the  tongues 
of  their  admired  male  companions.  They  did  not  look 
very  bad;  bad  people  never  do  look  as  bad  as  they  are, 
and  perhaps  they  are  sometimes  not  so  bad  as  they  look. 
Perhaps  these  were  kind,  but  not  very  wise,  mothers 
of  families,  who  were  merely  relieving  in  that  moment 
of  liquored  leisure  the  long  weariness  of  the  week's 
work.  I  may  have  passed  and  repassed  in  the  street 
some  of  the  families  that  they  were  the  mothers  of; 
it  was  in  that  fortnight  of  the  great  heat,  whose  oppres 
siveness  I  am  aware  of  having  vainly  attempted  to 
share  with  the  reader,  and  the  street  children  seemed 
to  have  been  roused  to  uncommon  vigilance  by  it. 
They  played  about  far  into  the  night,  unrebuked  by 
their  mothers,  and  the  large  babies,  whom  the  little 
girls  'were  always  lugging,  shared  their  untimely  wake- 
fulness  if  not  their  activity.  There  was  seldom  any 
crying  among  them  then,  though  by  day  the  voice  of 
grief  and  rage  was  often  lifted  above  the  shout  of  joy. 
If  their  mothers  did  not  call  them  in-doors,  their  fathers 
were  still  less  exacting.  After  the  marketing,  which 
took  place  in  the  neighboring  avenue,  where  there  began 
to  be  a  tremendous  preparation  for  it  in  the  afternoon, 
father  and  mother  alike  seemed  to  have  renounced  their 
domestic  cares  and  to  have  liberated  their  offspring  to 
the  unrestricted  enjoyment  of  the  street. 

As  for  drunkenness,  I  say  again  that  I  did  not  see 
much  of  it,  and  I  heard  less,  though  that  might  have 
been  because  I  did  not  look  or  listen  in  the  right  places. 
With  that,  as  with  everything  else  in  London,  I  took 
my  chance.  Once  I  overheard  the  unseen  transports 
of  a  lady  in  Mayfair  imaginably  kept  by  the  offices  of 
mutual  friends  from  assaulting  another  lady.  She, 
however,  though  she  excelled  in  violence,  did  not  equal 

109 


LONDON    FILMS 

in  persistence  the  injured  gentleman  who  for  a  long, 
long  hour  threatened  an  invisible  bicyclist  under  our 
windows  in  that  humbler  quarter  already  described 
as  a  poor  relation  of  Belgravia.  He  had  apparently 
been  almost  run  down  by  the  hapless  wheelman,  who, 
in  a  moment  of  fatuous  truth,  seemed  to  have  owned 
that  he  had  not  sounded  the  warning  bell.  In  making 
this  confession  he  had  evidently  apologized  with  his 
forehead  in  the  dust,  and  his  victim  had  then  evidently 
forgiven  him,  though  with  a  severe  admonition  for  the 
future.  Imaginably,  then,  the  bicyclist  had  remounted 
his  wheel  and  attempted  to  ride  off,  when  he  was  stopped 
and  brought  back  to  the  miserable  error  of  his  con 
fession.  The  whole  ground  was  then  gone  over  again, 
and  again  pardon  with  warning  was  given.  Even  a 
glad  good-night  was  exchanged,  the  wheelman's  voice 
rising  in  a  quaver  of  grateful  affection.  Then  he  seemed 
to  try  riding  off  again,  and  then  he  was  stayed  as  before 
by  the  victim,  whose  sense  of  public  duty  flamed  up 
at  the  prospect  of  his  escape.  I  do  not  know  how  the 
affair  ended;  perhaps  it  never  ended;  but  exhausted 
nature  sank  in  sleep,  and  I  at  least  was  saved  from  its 
continuance.  I  suppose  now  that  the  almost  injured 
person  was,  if  not  drunk,  at  that  stage  of  tipsiness  when 
the  sensibilities  are  keenest  and  self-respect  is  most 
alert.  An  American  could  not,  at  least,  have  been  so 
tedious  in  his  sober  senses,  and  I  will  not  believe  that  an 
Englishman  could. 

It  is  to  be  considered,  in  any  view  of  the  comparative 
drunkenness  of  the  great  Anglo-Saxon  race,  which  is  the 
hope  and  example  of  the  human  race  in  so  many  things, 
that  much  if  not  most  of  our  American  drunkenness  is 
alien,  while  English  drunkenness  is  almost  entirely  native. 
If  the  inebriety  of  the  spirited  Celt,  which  in  the  early 

110 


GLIMPSES  OF  THE  LOWLY  AND  THE  LOWLIER 

years  of  his  adoption  with  us  is  sometimes  conspicuous, 
were  added  to  the  sum  of  our  home-born  intoxication, 
there  could  be  no  doubt  which  was  the  greater.  As  it  is,  I 
am  afraid  that  I  cannot  claim  to  have  seen  more  drunken 
men  in  London  than  in  New  York;  and  when  I  think 
of  the  Family  Entrance,  indicated  at  the  side-door  of 
every  one  of  our  thousands  of  saloons,  I  am  not  sure  I 
can  plume  myself  on  the  superior  sobriety  of  our  drink 
ing  men's  wives.  As  for  poverty — if  I  am  still  partially 
on  that  subject  —  as  for  open  misery,  the  misery  that 
indecently  obtrudes  itself  upon  prosperity  and  begs 
of  it,  I  am  bound  to  say  that  I  have  met  more  of  it 
in  New  York  than  ever  I  met  during  my  sojourns  in 
London.  Such  misery  may  be  more  rigidly  policed  in 
the  English  capital,  more  kept  out  of  sight,  more  quelled 
from  asking  mercy,  but  I  am  sure  that  in  Fifth  Avenue, 
and  to  and  fro  in  the  millionaire  blocks  between  that 
avenue  and  the  last  possible  avenue  eastward,  more 
deserving  or  undeserving  poverty  has  made  itself  seen 
and  heard  to  my  personal  knowledge  than  in  Piccadilly, 
or  the  streets  of  Mayfair  or  Park  Lane,  or  the  squares 
and  places  which  are  the  London  analogues  of  our  best 
residential  quarters. 

Of  course,  the  statistics  will  probably  be  against  me — 
I  have  often  felt  an  enmity  in  statistics  —  and  I  offer 
my  observations  as  possibly  inexact.  One  can  only  be 
sure  of  one's  own  experience  (even  if  one  can  be  sure  of 
that),  and  I  can  do  no  more  than  urge  a  fact  or  two 
further  in  behalf  of  my  observations.  After  we  returned 
to  London,  in  September,  I  used  to  stroll  much  among 
the  recumbent  figures  of  the  unemployed  on  the  grass 
of  Green  Park,  where,  lulled  by  the  ocean  roar  of  the 
omnibuses  on  Piccadilly,  they  drowsed  away  the  hours 
of  the  autumnal  day.  These  fellow-men  looked  more 

ill 


LONDON    FILMS 

interesting  than  they  probably  were,  either  asleep  or 
awake,  and  if  I  could  really  have  got  inside  their  minds 
I  dare  say  I  should  have  been  no  more  amused  than  if  I 
had  penetrated  the  consciousness  of  as  many  people  of 
fashion  in  the  height  of  the  season.  But  what  I  wish 
to  say  is  that,  whether  sleeping  or  waking,  they  never, 
any  of  them,  asked  me  for  a  penny,  or  in  any  wise  inti 
mated  a  wish  to  divide  my  wealth  with  me.  If  I  offered 
it  myself,  it  was  another  thing,  and  it  was  not  refused  to 
the  extent  of  a  shilling  by  the  good  fellow  whose  conver 
sation  I  bought  one  afternoon  when  I  found  him,  sitting 
up  in  his  turfy  bed,  and  mending  his  coat  with  needle 
and  thread.  I  asked  him  of  the  times  and  their  badness, 
and  I  hope  I  left  him  with  the  conviction  that  I  believed 
him  an  artisan  out  of  work,  taking  his  misfortune  brave 
ly.  He  was  certainly  cheerful,  and  we  had  some  agree 
able  moments,  which  I  could  not  prolong,  because  I  did 
not  like  waking  the  others,  or  such  of  them  as  might 
be  sleeping. 

I  did  not  object  to  his  cheerfulness,  though  for  misery 
to  be  cheerful  seemed  to  be  rather  trivial,  and  I  was  bet 
ter  pleased  with  the  impassioned  bearing  of  a  pair  who 
passed  me  another  day  as  I  sat  on  one  of  the  benches 
beside  the  path  where  the  trees  were  dropping  their 
listless  leaves.  The  pair  were  a  father  and  mother,  if  I 
might  judge  from  their  having  each  a  babe  in  their 
arms  and  two  or  three  other  babes  at  their  heels.  They 
were  not  actually  in  tatters,  but  anything  more  intensely 
threadbare  than  their  thin  clothes  could  not  be  imagined; 
they  were  worse  than  ragged.  They  looked  neither  to 
the  right  nor  to  the  left,  but  stared  straight  on  and 
pressed  straight  on  rather  rapidly,  with  such  desperate 
tragedy  in  their  looks  as  moved  me  to  that  noble  terror 
which  the  old-fashioned  critics  used  to  inculcate  as  the 

112 


GLIMPSES  OF  THE  LOWLY  AND  THE  LOWLIER 

best  effect  of  tragedy  on  the  stage.  I  followed  them  a 
little  way  before  I  gained  courage  to  speak  to  the  man, 
who  seemed  to  have  been  sick,  and  looked  more  miser 
able,  if  there  was  a  choice,  than  the  woman.  Then  I 
asked  him,  superfluously  enough  (it  might  have  seemed 
in  a  ghastly  pleasantry,  to  him)  if  he  was  down  on  his 
luck.  He  owned  that  he  was,  and  in  guarantee  of  his 
good  faith  took  the  shilling  I  offered  him.  If  his  need 
had  apparently  been  less  dire  I  might  have  made  it  a  sov 
ereign;  but  one  must  not  fly  in  the  face  of  the  Providence, 
which  is  probably  not  ill-advised  in  choosing  certain  of  us 
to  be  reduced  to  absolute  destitution.  The  man  smiled  a 
sick,  thin-lipped  smile  which  showed  his  teeth  in  a  sort  of 
pinched  way,  but  did  not  speak  more;  his  wife,  gloomily 
unmoved,  passed  me  without  a  look,  and  I  rather  slunk 
back  to  my  seat,  feeling  that  I  had  represented,  if  I  had 
not  embodied,  society  to  her. 

I  contribute  this  instance  of  poverty  as  the  extremest 
that  came  to  my  knowledge  in  London;  but  I  do  not 
insist  that  it  was  genuine,  and  if  any  more  scientific 
student  of  civilization  wishes  to  insinuate  that  my  trag 
edy  was  a  masquerade  got  up  by  that  pair  to  victimize 
the  sentimental  American  stranger,  and  do  him  out  of 
one  of  his  ill-got  shillings,  I  will  not  gainsay  him.  I 
merely  maintain,  as  I  have  always  done,  that  the  condi 
tions  are  alike  in  the  Old  World  and  the  New,  and  that 
the  only  difference  is  in  the  circumstances,  which  may 
be  better  now  in  New  York,  and  now  in  London,  while 
the  conditions  are  always  bad  everywhere  for  the  poor. 
That  is  a  point  on  which  I  shall  not  yield  to  any  more 
scientific  student  of  civilization.  But  in  the  mean  time 
my  light  mind  was  taken  from  that  dolorous  pair  to 
another  pair  on  the  grass  of  the  slope  not  far  off  in 
front  of  me. 

113 


LONDON    FILMS 

Hard  by  the  scene  of  this  pathetic  passage  a  pair 
of  quite  well-dressed  young  people  had  thrown  them 
selves,  side  by  side,  on  the  September  grass  as  if  it 
had  been  the  sand  at  any  American  seashore,  or  the 
embrowned  herbage  of  Hyde  Park  in  July.  Perhaps 
the  shelving  ground  was  dryer  than  the  moist  levels 
where  the  professional  unemployed  lay  in  scores;  but 
I  do  not  think  it  would  have  mattered  to  that  tender 
pair  if  it  had  been  very  damp;  so  warmly  were  they 
lapped  in  love's  dream,  they  could  not  have  taken 
cold.  The  exile  could  only  note  the  likeness  of  their 
open-air  love-making  to  that  in  public  places  at  home, 
and  contrast  it  with  the  decorum  of  Latin  countries 
where  nothing  of  the  kind  is  known.  If  anything, 
English  lovers  of  this  type  are  franker  than  with  us, 
doubtless  because  of  the  greater  simplicity  of  the  Eng 
lish  nature;  and  they  seem  to  be  of  a  better  class.  One 
day  when  I  was  sitting  in  a  penny  chair  in  Green  Park, 
the  agent  of  the  company  came  and  collected  the  rent 
of  me.  I  thought  it  a  hardship,  for  I  had  purposely 
chosen  an  inconspicuous  situation  where  I  should  not 
be  found,  and  it  was  long  past  the  end  of  the  season, 
when  no  company  should  have  had  the  heart  to  collect 
rent  for  its  chairs.  But  I  met  my  fate  without  murmur 
ing,  and  as  the  young  man  who  sold  me  a  ticket  good  for 
the  whole  day  at  a  penny,  was  obviously  not  pressed  with 
business,  I  tried  to  recoup  myself  by  a  little  conversation. 

"I  suppose  your  job  is  pretty  well  over  now?  I 
don't  see  many  of  your  chairs  occupied." 

"Well,  no  sir,  not  by  day,  sir.  But  there's  quite  a 
few  taken  at  night,  sir — over  there  in  the  hollow."  I 
looked  a  leading  question,  and  he  went  on :  "  Young  peo 
ple  come  to  sit  there  in  the  evening,  sir.  It's  a  quiet 
place  and  out  of  the  way." 

114 


GLIMPSES  OF  THE  LOWLY  AND  THE  LOWLIER 

"Oh,  yes.  Where  they're  not  molested  by  the  un 
employed?"  I  cast  a  generalizing  glance  over  the  dead 
and  wounded  of  the  battle  of  life  strewn  about  the 
grass  of  an  adjacent  space. 

"Well,  that's  just  where  it  is,  sir.  Those  fellows  do 
nothing  but  sleep  all  day,  and  then  after  dark  they  get 
up  and  begin  to  prowl.  They  spy,  some  of  'em,  on  the 
young  people  courting,  and  follow  'em  'ome  and  black 
mail  'em.  They're  a  bad  lot,  sir.  They  wouldn't  work 
if  they  could  get  it." 

I  perceived  that  my  friend  was  a  capitalist,  and  I  sus 
pected  him  of  being  one  of  the  directors  of  the  penny- 
chair  company.  But  perhaps  he  thought  me  a  capi 
talist,  too,  and  fancied  that  I  would  like  to  have  him 
decry  the  unemployed.  Still  he  may  have  been  right 
about  the  blackmailing;  one  must  live,  and  the  innocent 
courage  of  open-air  courtship  in  London  offers  occasions 
of  wilful  misconstruction.  In  a  great  city,  the  sense 
of  being  probably  unnoted  and  unknown  among  its 
myriads  must  eventuate  in  much  indifference  to  one's 
surroundings.  How  should  a  young  couple  on  an 
omnibus-top  imagine  that  a  stranger  in  the  seat  opposite 
could  not  help  overhearing  the  tender  dialogue  in  which 
they  renewed  their  love  after  some  previous  falling 
out? 

"But  I  was  hurt,  Will,  dear." 

"Oh,  I'm  so  sorry,  dear." 

"I  know,  Will,  dear." 

"But  it's  all  right  now,  dear?" 

"Oh  yes,  Will,  dear." 

Could  anything  be  sweeter?  I  am  ashamed  to  set  it 
down;  it  ought  to  be  sacred;  and  nothing  but  my  zeal 
in  these  social  studies  could  make  me  profane  it.  Who 
would  not  have  been  the  careless  brute  this  young  man 

115 


LONDON    FILMS 

must  have  been,  if  only  one  might  have  tasted  the  sweet 
ness  of  such  forgiving?  His  pardon  set  a  premium  on 
misbehavior.  He  was  a  nice-looking  young  fellow,  but 
she  was  nicer,  and  in  her  tender  eyes  there  seemed  more 
wisdom.  Probably  she  knew  just  at  what  moment  to 
temper  justice  with  mercy. 

Sometimes  women  do  not  know  when  to  temper 
mercy  with  justice.  I  fancied  this  the  error  of  the  fond 
nursemaid  whom  I  one  day  saw  pushing  her  peram 
bulator  at  almost  an  illegal  motor-pace  along  the  side 
walk  in  order  to  keep  up  with  the  tall  grenadier  who 
marched  with  his  head  in  the  air,  and  let  her  make  this 
show  of  being  in  his  company,  but  not  once  looking  at 
her,  or  speaking  to  her.  The  hearts  of  such  poor  girls 
are  always  with  the  military,  so  that  it  is  said  to  be 
comparatively  easy  to  keep  servants  in  the  neighborhood 
of  the  barracks,  or  even  in  those  streets  that  the  troops 
habitually  pass  through,  and  may  be  conveniently 
gloated  upon  from  attic-windows  or  basement  areas. 
Probably  much  of  the  natural  supremacy  of  the  male  of 
our  species  has  been  lost  in  all  ranks  of  society  through 
the  unimpressive  simplicity  of  modern  dress.  If  men 
in  civil  life  still  wore  ruffles  at  their  wrists,  and  gold-lace 
on  their  coats,  and  feathers  in  their  hats,  very  likely 
they  could  still  knock  women  about  as  they  used,  and 
be  all  the  more  admired.  It  is  a  point  worth  consider 
ing  in  the  final  adjustment  of  their  mutual  relations. 

A  pair  of  lovers  who  match  themselves  in  my  memory 
with  those  I  eavesdropped  so  eagerly  on  the  omnibus- 
top,  was  a  silent  pair  I  noted  one  day  in  St.  Paul's. 
They  were  imaginably  a  bridal  pair,  who  had  apparently 
lost  heart  among  the  hard  banalities  of  the  place,  where 
every  monument  is  more  forbidding  than  another,  and 
had  sunk  down  on  a  seat  by  themselves,  and  were  try- 

116 


GLIMPSES  OF  THE  LOWLY  AND  THE  LOWLIER 

ing  to  get  back  a  little  courage  by  furtively  holding 
each  other's  hands.  It  was  a  touching  sight,  and  of  a 
human  interest  larger  than  any  London  characteristic. 
So,  in  a  little  different  sort,  was  the  rapture  of  a  couple 
behind  a  tree  on  whpm  a  friend  of  mine  came  suddenly 
in  St.  James's  Park  at  the  very  moment  when  the  eager 
he  was  pressing  the  coy  she  to  be  his.  My  friend,  who 
had  not  the  courage  of  an  ever-present  literary  mission, 
fled  abashed  from  the  place,  and  I  think  he  was  right; 
but  surely  it  was  no  harm  to  overhear  the  affianced  of  a 
'bus-driver  talking  tender  nothings  to  him  all  the  way 
from  Knightsbridge  to  Kensington,  bending  over  from 
the  seat  she  had  taken  next  him.  The  witness  was 
going  up  to  a  dentist  in  that  region,  and  professed  that 
in  his  preoccupation  with  the  lovers  he  forgot  the  furies 
of  a  raging  tooth,  and  decided  not  to  have  it  out,  after 
all. 


XII 

TWICE-SEEN   SIGHTS  AND  HALF-FANCIED  FACTS 

L)NDON  is  so  manifold  (as  I  have  all  along  been 
saying)  that  it  would  be  advisable,  if  one  could,  to 
see  it  in  a  sort  of  severalty,  and  take  it  in  the  successive 
strata  of  its  unfathomable  interest.  Perhaps  it  could 
best  be  visited  by  a  syndicate  of  cultivated  Americans; 
then  one  could  give  himself  to  its  political  or  civic  in 
terest,  another  to  its  religious  memories  and  associa 
tions,  another  to  its  literary  and  artistic  records;  no  one 
American,  however  cultivated,  could  do  justice  to  all 
these  claims,  even  with  life  and  health  of  an  expectation 
beyond  that  of  the  most  uncultivated  American.  Be 
sides  this  suggestion  I  should  like  to  offer  a  warning,  and 
this  is,  that  no  matter  with  what  devoted  passion  the 
American  lover  of  London  approaches  her  he  must  not 
hope  for  an  exclusive  possession  of  her  heart.  If  she 
is  insurpassably  the  most  interesting,  the  most  fascinat 
ing  of  all  the  cities  that  ever  were,  let  him  be  sure  that 
he  is  not  the  first  to  find  it  out.  He  may  not  like  it,  but 
he  must  reconcile  himself  to  seeing  some  English  rival 
before  him  in  devotion  to  any  aspect  of  her  divinity. 
It  is  not  for  nothing  that  poets,  novelists,  historians, 
antiquarians  have  been  born  in  England  for  so  many 
ages;  and  not  a  palm's  breadth  of  her  sky,  not  a  foot  of 
her  earth,  not  a  stone  or  brick  of  her  myriad  wall- 
spaces  but  has  been  fondly  noted,  studied,  and  described 

118 


TWICE-SEEN  SIGHTS  AND  HALF-FANCIED  FACTS 

in  prose,  or  celebrated  in  verse.  English  books  are  full 
of  England,  and  she  is  full  of  Englishmen,  whom  the 
American,  come  he  never  so  numerously,  will  find  out 
numbering  him  in  the  pursuit  of  any  specific  charm  of 
hers.  In  my  wanderings  otherwhere  in  their  islands  I 
had  occasion  to  observe  how  fond  the  English  were  of 
English  travel  and  English  objects  of  interest,  and 
wherever  I  went  in  London  there  were  Englishmen 
elbowing  me  from  the  front  rank,  not  rudely,  not  un 
kindly,  but  insensibly  to  my  rights  of  priority  as  an 
alien.  In  the  old  days  of  my  Italian  travels  I  had  been 
used  as  a  foreigner  to  carrying  it  with  a  high  hand  at 
shrines  of  the  beautiful  or  memorable.  I  do  not  know 
how  it  is  now,  but  in  those  days  there  was  nothing  in 
the  presence  of  an  Italian  church,  gallery,  palace,  piazza, 
or  ruin  that  you  expected  less  than  an  Italian.  As  for 
Rome,  there  was  no  such  thing  as  doing  as  the  Romans 
do  in  such  places,  because  there  were  apparently  no 
Romans  to  set  you  the  example.  But  there  are  plenty 
of  Londoners  in  London,  and  of  a  curiosity  about  Lon 
don  far  greater  than  you  can  ever  inspire  them  with  for 
New  York. 

Even  at  such  a  place  as  the  Zoological  Gardens,  which 
they  must  have  been  visiting  all  their  lives,  there  were, 
at  least,  a  thousand  Englishmen  for  every  cultivated 
American  we  could  make  sure  of  when  we  went  there; 
and  as  it  was  a  Sunday,  when  the  gardens  are  closed  to 
the  general  public,  this  overwhelming  majority  of  natives 
must  have  come  on  orders  from  Fellows  of  the  Society 
such  as  we  had  supposed  would  admit  us  much  more 
selectly,  if  not  solely.  Still,  the  place  was  not  crowded, 
and  if  it  had  been,  still  it  would  have  been  delightful 
on  a  summer  afternoon,  of  that  hovering  softness,  half- 
cloud,  half-sun,  which  the  London  sky  has  the  patent 
9  119 


LONDON    FILMS 

of.  The  hawthorn-trees,  white  and  pink  with  their 
may,  were  like  cloudlets  dropped  from  that  sky,  as  it 
then  was  and  would  be  at  sunset;  and  there  was  a  den 
sity  of  grass  underfoot  and  foliage  overhead  in  which 
one's  own  childhood  found  itself  again,  so  that  one  felt 
as  free  for  the  simple  pleasure  of  consorting  with  strange 
beasts  and  birds  as  if  one  were  still  ten  or  eleven  years 
old.  But  I  cannot  hope  to  rejuvenate  my  readers  in  the 
same  degree,  and  so  had  better  not  insist  upon  the 
animals;  the  herds  of  elephants,  the  troops  of  lions 
and  tigers,  the  schools  of  hippopotamuses,  and  the 
mass-meetings  of  anthopoid  apes.  Above  and  beyond 
these  in  their  strangeness  were  the  figures  of  humanity 
representative  of  the  globe-girdling  British  empire,  in 
their  drawers  and  turbans  and  their  swarthy  skins, 
who  could  urge  a  patriotic  interest,  impossible  for  me, 
in  the  place.  One  is,  of  course,  used  to  all  sorts  of  alien 
shapes  in  Central  Park,  but  there  they  are  somehow  at 
once  less  surprising  and  less  significant  than  these 
Asian  and  African  forms;  they  will  presently  be  Amer 
icans,  and  like  the  rest  of  us;  but  those  dark  imperial- 
ings  were  already  British  and  eternally  un-English. 
They  frequented  the  tea  -  tables  spread  in  pleasant 
shades  and  shelters,  and  ate  buns  and  bread-and-butter, 
like  their  fellow-subjects,  but  their  dark  liquid  eyes 
roamed  over  the  blue  and  gold  and  pink  of  the  English 
complexions  with  an  effect  of  mystery  irreconcilable 
forever  with  the  matter-of-fact  mind  behind  their  bland 
masks.  We  called  them  Burmese,  Eurasians,  Hindoos, 
Malays,  and  fatigued  ourselves  with  guessing  at  them 
so  that  we  were  faint  for  the  tea  from  which  they  kept 
us  at  the  crowded  tables  in  the  gardens  or  on  the  ve 
randas  of  the  tea-houses.  But  we  were  not  so  insatiable 
of  them  as  of  their  fellow-subjects,  the  native  British 

120 


TWICE-SEEN  SIGHTS  AND  HALF-FANCIED  FACTS 

whom  one  sees  at  a  Sunday  of  the  Zoo  to  perhaps  special 
advantage.  Our  Sunday  was  in  the  season,  and  the  sea 
son  had  conjecturably  qualified  it,  so  that  one  could 
sometimes  feel  oneself  in  company  better  than  one's  own. 
The  children  were  well-dressed  and  admirably  well-be 
haved;  they  justly  outnumbered  their  elders,  and  it  was 
obviously  their  day.  But  it  was  also  the  day  of  their 
elders,  who  had  made  excuse  of  the  children's  pleasure 
in  coming  to  the  Zoo  for  their  own.  Some  indeed  were 
not  so  much  their  elders,  and  the  young  aunts  and 
uncles,  who  were  naturally  cousins,  lost  themselves  at 
times  a  little  way  from  the  children  and  maids,  in  the 
quieter  walks  or  nooks,  or  took  boat  to  be  alone  on  the 
tranquil  waters  with  one  another.  They  were  then 
more  interesting  than  the  strangest  Malays  and  Hindoos, 
and  I  wonder  what  these  made  of  them,  as  they  con 
templated  their  segregation  with  the  other  thronging 
spectators. 

We  had  not  pledged  ourselves  not  to  go  to  the  Zoo; 
we  were  there  quite  voluntarily;  but  among  the  places 
which  we  promised  ourselves  not  to  visit  again  were  the 
South  Kensington  Museum  and  the  National  Gallery; 
and  I  shall  always  be  glad  that  we  did  not  keep  faith 
with  ourselves  in  regard  to  the  last.  We  went  to  it 
again  not  once,  but  several  times,  and  always  with  an 
increasing  sense  of  its  transcendent  representativity.  It 
is  not  merely  that  for  all  the  schools  of  painting  it  is 
almost  as  good  as  going  to  the  continental  countries 
where  they  flourished,  and  is  much  easier.  It  is  not 
only  that  for  English  history,  as  it  lives  in  the  portrait 
ure  of  kings  and  queens,  and  their  courtiers  and  courte 
sans  and  heroes  and  statesmen,  it  is  the  past  made  per 
sonal  to  the  beholder  and  forever  related  to  himself, 
as  if  he  had  seen  those  people  in  the  flesh.  It  is, 

121 


LONDON    FILMS 

above  everything  else,  for  those  rooms  upon  rooms 
crowded  with  the  pictures  and  statues  and  busts  of  the 
Englishmen  who  have  made  England  England  in  every 
field  of  achievement  that  is  oppressively,  almost  crush- 
ingly   wonderful.      Before   that   swarming   population 
of  poets,  novelists,  historians,  essayists,  dramatists;  of 
painters,  sculptors,  architects;  of  astronomers,  mathe 
maticians,  geologists,  physicians;  of  philosophers,  theolo 
gians,  divines;  of  statesmen,  politicians,  inventors,  act 
ors;  of  philanthropists,  reformers,  economists,  the  great 
of  our  own  history  need  not,  indeed,  shrink  in  form,  but 
must  dwindle  in  number  till  our  past  seems  as  thinly 
peopled  as  our  continent.     It  is  in  these  rooms  that  the 
grandeur  of  England,  historically,  resides.     You  may, 
if  you  are  so  envious,  consider  it  in  that  point  and  this, 
and  at  some  point  find  her  less  great  than  the  greatest 
of  her  overgrown  or  overgrowing  daughters,  but  from 
the  presence  of  that  tremendous  collectivity,  that  pop 
ulous  commonwealth  of  famous  citizens  whose  census 
can  hardly  be  taken,  you  must  come  away  and  own,  in 
the  welcome  obscurity  to  which  you  plunge  among  the 
millions  of  her  capital,  that  in  all-round  greatness  we 
have  hardly  even  the  imagination  of  her  transcendence. 
Well  towards  fifty  years  had  passed  between  my  first 
and  last  visits  to  London,  but  I  think  I  had  kept  for  it 
throughout  that  long  interval  much  more  of  the  earlier 
sentiment  than  for  any  other  city  that  I  have  known. 
I  do  not  wish  to  be  mystical,  and  I  hesitate  to  say  that 
this  sentiment  was  continuous  through  the  smell  of  the 
coal -smoke,  or  that  the  smoke  formed  a  solution  in 
which  all  associations  were  held,  and  from  which  they 
were,  from  time  to  time,  precipitated  in  specific  mem 
ories.     The  peculiar  odor  had  at  once  made  me  at  home 
in  London,  for  it  had  probably  so  saturated  my  first 

122 


TWICE-SEEN  SIGHTS  AND  HALF-FANCIED  FACTS 

consciousness  in  the  little  black,  smoky  town  on  the 
Ohio  River,  where  I  was  born,  that  I  found  myself  in  a 
most  intimate  element  when  I  now  inhaled  it.  But 
apart  from  this  personal  magic,  the  London  smoke  has 
always  seemed  to  me  full  of  charm.  Of  course  it  is 
mostly  the  smoke  which  gives  "atmosphere,"  softens 
outlines,  tenderly  blurs  forms,  makes  near  and  far  the 
same,  and  intenerisce  il  cuore,  for  any  him  whose  infant 
sense  it  bathed.  No  doubt  it  thickens  the  constant 
damp,  and  lends  mass  and  viscosity  to  the  fog;  but  it  is 
over-blamed  and  under-praised.  It  is  chiefly  objection 
able,  it  is  wholly  deplorable,  indeed,  when  it  descends 
in  those  sooty  particles,  the  blacks;  but  in  all  my  London 
sojourns  I  have  had  but  one  experience  of  the  blacks, 
and  I  will  not  condemn  the  smoke  because  of  them.  It 
gives  a  wild  pathetic  glamour  to  the  late  winter  sun 
rises  and  the  early  winter  sunsets,  the  beauty  of  which 
dwells  still  in  my  mind  from  my  first  London  sojourn. 
In  my  most  recent  autumn,  it  mellowed  the  noons  to 
the  softest  effulgence;  in  the  summer  it  was  a  veil  in  the 
air  which  kept  the  flame  of  the  heated  term  from  doing 
its  worst.  It  hung,  diaphonous,  in  the  dusty  perspec 
tives,  but  it  gathered  and  thickened  about  the  squares 
and  places,  and  subdued  all  edges,  so  that  nothing  cut 
or  hurt  the  vision. 

I  was  glad  of  that,  because  I  found  one  of  my  greatest 
pleasures  in  looking  at  the  massed  tree-forms  in  those 
gardened  -  groves,  which  I  never  penetrated.  The 
greater  parks  are  open  to  the  public,  but  the  squares 
are  enclosed  by  tall  iron  fences,  and  locked  against  the 
general  with  keys  of  which  the  particular  have  the  keep 
ing  in  the  houses  about  them.  It  gave  one  a  fine  shiver 
of  exclusion  as  populace,  or  mob,  to  look  through  their 
barriers  at  children  playing  on  the  lawns  within,  while 

123 


LONDON   FILMS 

their  nurses  sat  reading,  or  pushed  perambulators  over 
the  trim  walks.  Sometimes  it  was  even  young  ladies 
who  sat  reading,  or,  at  the  worst,  governesses.  But 
commonly  the  squares  were  empty,  though  the  grass 
so  invited  the  foot,  and  the  benches  in  the  border  of  the 
shade,  or  round  the  great  beds  of  bloom,  extended  their 
arms  and  spread  their  welcoming  laps  for  any  of  the  par 
ticular  who  would  lounge  in  them. 

I  remember  only  one  of  these  neighborhood  gardens 
which  was  open  to  the  public,  and  that  was  in  the  poor 
neighborhood  which  we  lodged  on  the  edge  of,  equally 
with  the  edge  of  Belgravia.  It  was  opened,  by  the 
great  nobleman  who  owned  nearly  the  whole  of  that 
part  of  London,  on  all  but  certain  days  of  the  week, 
with  restrictions  lettered  on  a  board  nearly  as  big  as  the 
garden  itself;  but  I  never  saw  it  much  frequented,  per 
haps  because  I  usually  happened  upon  it  when  it  was 
locked  against  its  beneficiaries.  Upon  the  whole,  these 
London  squares,  though  they  flattered  the  eye,  did  not 
console  the  spirit  so  much  as  the  far  uglier  places  in 
New  York,  or  the  pretty  places  in  Paris,  which  are  free 
to  all.  It  can  be  said  for  the  English  way  that  when 
such  places  are  free  to  all  they  are  not  so  free  to  some, 
and  that  is  true.  In  this  world  you  have  to  exclude 
either  the  many  or  the  few,  and  in  England  it  is  rather 
the  many  who  are  excluded.  Being  one  of  those  shut 
out,  I  did  not  like  the  English  way  so  well  as  ours,  but 
if  I  had  had  keys  to  those  locks,  I  should  not  now  dare 
ask  myself  which  principle  I  should  have  preferred.  It 
would  have  been  something  like  choosing  between  popu 
lar  government  and  family  government  after  having 
been  created  one  of  the  governing  families. 

Life,  I  felt,  would  ^be  sensibly  dignified  if  one  could 
spend  some  months  of  every  year  of  it  in  a  mansion 

124 


TWICE-SEEN  SIGHTS  AND  HALF-FANCIED  FACTS 

looking  down  into  the  leafy  tops  of  those  squares. 
One's  mansion  might  not  always  have  the  company  of 
the  most  historical  or  patrician  mansions;  sometimes 
these  are  to  be  found  in  very  unexpected  and  even  in 
conspicuous  places;  but  commonly  the  associated  dwell 
ings  would  be  ample,  if  not  noble.  They  would  rarely 
be  elbowed  by  those  structures,  not  yet  quite  so  frequent 
in  London  as  in  New  York,  which  lift  themselves  in  an 
outer  grandeur  unsupported  by  the  successive  levels 
of  the  social  pretence  within.  I  should  say  that  with 
the  English,  more  than  with  us,  the  perpendicular  is 
still  socially  superior  to  the  horizontal  domestication. 
Yet  the  London  flats  are  of  more  comfortable  and  taste 
ful  arrangement  than  ours.  They  are  better  lighted 
always,  never  having  (as  far  as  I  know)  dark  rooms 
blindly  staring  into  airless  pits;  and  if  they  are  not  so 
well  heated,  that  is  because  the  English  do  not  wish, 
or  at  least  expect,  to  be  heated  at  all.  The  elevator  is 
not  so  universal  as  with  us,  but  the  stairways  are  easier 
and  statelier.  The  public  presence  of  the  edifice  is 
statelier,  too;  but  if  you  come  to  state,  the  grandest  of 
these  buildings  must  deny  its  denizens  the  splendor  of 
flunkeys  standing  before  its  door,  on  a  day  or  night  of 
social  function,  as  one  sees  them  standing  by  the  steps 
or  portals  of  some  mansion  that  houses  a  single  family. 
To  which  of  the  flat-dwellers  would  they  be  supposed 
to  belong,  if  they  grouped  themselves  at  the  common 
entrance?  For  anything  specific  in  their  attendance 
they  might  almost  as  well  be  at  the  next  street-corner. 
Time  and  again,  in  these  pages,  I  have  paid  my  duty, 
which  has  been  my  grateful  pleasure,  to  the  birds  which 
haunt  the  squares,  and  sing  there.  You  are  not  obliged 
to  have  a  householder's  key  in  order  to  hear  them;  and 
when  the  hawthorns  and  the  horse-chestnuts  blossomed 

125 


LONDON   FILMS 

you  required  a  proprietorial  right  as  little.  Somehow, 
my  eye  and  ear  always  disappointed  themselves  in  the 
absence  of  rooks  from  such  places.  My  senses  ought  to 
have  been  better  instructed  than  to  expect  rooks  in 
London,  but  they  had  been  so  educated  to  the  sight  and 
sound  of  rooks  everywhere  else  in  England  that  they 
mechanically  demanded  them  in  town.  I  do  not  even 
know  what  birds  they  were  that  sang  in  the  spaces; 
but  I  was  aware  of  a  fringe  of  sparrow-chirpings  sharply 
edging  their  song  next  the  street;  and  where  the  squares 
were  reduced  to  crescents,  or  narrow  parallelograms, 
or  mere  strips  or  parings  of  groves,  I  suspect  that  this 
edging  was  all  there  was  of  the  mesh  of  bird-notes  so 
densely  interwoven  in  the  squares. 

I  have  spoken  hitherto  of  that  passion  for  dress  to 
which  all  the  womanhood  of  England  has  so  bewitch- 
ingly  abandoned  itself,  and  which  seemed  to  have  reached 
an  undue  excess  in  the  housemaid  in  a  bolero  hat  and  a 
trained  skirt,  putting  that  white  on  the  front  steps 
which  is  so  universal  in  England  that  if  the  sun  missed 
it  after  rising  he  might  instantly  go  down  again  in  the 
supposition  that  it  was  still  night.  It  must  always  be  a 
woman  who  whitens  the  steps ;  if  a  man-servant  were  to 
do  it  any  such  dreadful  thing  might  happen  as  would 
follow  his  blacking  the  boots,  which  is  alienably  a  female 
function.  Under  the  circumstances  one  hears  much 
of  the  general  decay  of  excellence  in  woman-servants  in 
London.  They  are  far  less  amiable,  patient,  respectful, 
and  faithful  than  when  their  mistresses  were  young. 
This  may  be  from  the  fact  that  so  many  more  employ 
ments  besides  domestic  service  seem  to  be  open  to  girls. 
Apparently  very  young  girls  are  preferred  in  the  innu 
merable  postal-stations,  if  one  may  judge  from  the  chil 
dren  of  tender  years  who  sell  you  stamps,  and  take  your 

126 


TWICE-SEEN  SIGHTS  AND  HALF-FANCIED  FACTS 

telegrams  and  register  your  letters.  I  used  at  first  to 
tremble  for  a  defective  experience,  if  not  a  defective  in 
telligence  in  them,  but  I  did  not  find  them  inadequate 
to  their  duties  through  either.  Still  their  employment 
was  so  phenomenal  that  I  could  not  help  remarking 
upon  it.  None  of  my  English  friends  seemed  to  have 
noticed  it,  till  at  last  one,  who  had  noticed  it,  said  he 
believed  it  was  because  the  government  found  them 
cheap,  and  was  in  that  way  helping  repay  itself  for  the 
enormous  expenses  of  the  Boer  War. 

In  the  London  shops  I  did  not  think  women  were  so 
generally  employed  as  in  our  own,  or  those  of  the  Con 
tinent.  But  this  may  have  been  a  conclusion  from 
careless  observation.  In  the  book-stores  to  which  I 
most  resorted,  and  which  I  did  not  think  so  good  as 
ours,  I  remember  to  have  seen  but  one  saleswoman. 
Of  course  saleswomen  prevail  in  all  the  large  stores 
where  women's  goods,  personal  and  household,  are 
sold,  and  which  I  again  did  not  think  comparable  to 
ours.  Seldom  in  any  small  shop,  or  even  book-stall  or 
newspaper-stand,  did  women  seem  to  be  in  charge. 
But  at  the  street  -  markets,  especially  those  for  the 
poorer  customers,  market-women  were  the  rule.  I 
should  say,  in  fine,  that  woman  was  a  far  more  domes 
tic  animal  in  London  than  in  Paris,  and  never  quite  the 
beast  of  burden  that  she  is  in  Berlin,  or  other  German 
cities  great  or  small;  but  I  am  not  going  to  sentimental 
ize  her  lot  in  England.  Probably  it  is  only  compara 
tively  ideal  in  the  highest  classes.  In  the  lower  and 
lowest  its  hardship  is  attested  by  the  stunted  stature, 
and  the  stunted  figure  of  the  ordinary  English  lower- 
class  woman.  Even  among  the  elect  of  the  afternoon 
parade  in  the  Park,  I  do  not  think  there  was  so  great 
an  average  of  tall  young  girls  as  in  any  fashionable  show 

127 


LONDON    FILMS 

with  us,  where  they  form  the  patriciate  which  our  plu 
tocracy  has  already  flowered  into.  But  there  was  a 
far  greater  average  of  tall  young  men  than  with  us; 
which  may  mean  that,  with  the  English,  nobility  is  a 
masculine  distinction. 

As  for  those  great  department  stores  with  which  the 
question  of  women  relates  itself  inevitably,  I  have  cur 
sorily  assumed  our  priority  in  them,  and  the  more  I 
think  of  them,  the  more  I  am  inclined  to  believe  myself 
right.  But  that  is  a  matter  in  which  women  only  may 
be  decisive;  the  nice  psychology  involved  cannot  be 
convincingly  studied  by  the  other  sex.  I  will  venture, 
again,  however,  so  far  into  this  strange  realm  as  to  say 
that  the  subordinate  shops  did  not  seem  so  many  or  so 
good  in  London  as  in  New  York,  though  when  one  re 
members  the  two  Bond  Streets,  and  Oxford,  and  lower 
Piccadilly,  one  might  feel  the  absurdity  of  claiming 
superiority  for  Broadway,  or  Fourteenth  and  Twenty- 
third  streets,  or  Union  and  Madison  squares,  or  the  parts 
of  Third  and  Sixth  avenues  to  which  ladies'  shopping 
has  spread.  After  all,  perhaps  there  is  but  one  London, 
in  this  as  in  some  other  things. 

Among  the  other  things  are  hardly  the  restaurants 
which  abound  with  us,  good,  bad,  and  indifferent.  In 
the  affair  of  public  feeding,  of  the  costliest,  as  well  as 
the  cheapest  sorts,  we  may,  with  our  polyglot  menus, 
safely  challenge  the  competition  of  any  metropolis  in 
the  world,  not  to  say  the  universe.  It  is  not  only  that 
we  make  the  openest  show  of  this  feeding,  and  parade 
it  at  windows,  whereas  the  English  retire  it  to  curtained 
depths  within,  but  that,  in  reality,  we  transact  it  ubiq 
uitously,  perpetually.  In  both  London  and  New  York 
it  is  exotic  for  the  most  part,  or,  at  least,  on  the  higher 
levels,  and  the  administration  is  in  the  hands  of  those 

128 


TWICE-SEEN  SIGHTS  AND  HALF-FANCIED  FACTS 

foreigners  who  take  our  money  for  learning  English 
of  us.  But  there  is  no  such  range  of  Italian  and  French 
and  German  restaurants  in  London  as  in  New  York, 
and  of  what  there  are  none  are  at  once  so  cheap  and  so 
good  as  ours.  The  cheaper  restaurants  are  apt  to  be 
English,  sincere  in  material,  but  heavy  and  unattractive 
in  expression;  in  everything  culinary  the  island  touch 
seems  hopelessly  inartistic.  One  Sunday  morning,  far 
from  home,  when  the  lunch  came  prematurely,  we 
found  all  the  English  eating-houses  devoutly  shut,  and 
our  wicked  hope  was  in  a  little  Italian  trattoria  which 
opened  its  doors  to  the  alien  air  with  some  such  artificial 
effect  as  an  orange-tree  in  a  tub  might  expand  its  blos 
soms.  There  was  a  strictly  English  company  within, 
and  the  lunch  was  to  the  English  taste,  but  the  touch 
was  as  Latin  as  it  could  have  been  by  the  Arno  or  the 
Tiber  or  on  the  Riva  degli  Schiavoni. 

At  the  great  restaurants,  where  one  may  see  fashion 
lunching,  the  kitchen  seemed  of  an  equal  inspiration 
with  Sherry's  or  Delmonico's,  but  the  entourage  was  less 
oppressively  glaring,  and  the  service  had  more  moments 
of  effacing  itself,  and  allowing  one  to  feel  oneself  a  prin 
cipal  part  of  the  drama.  That  is  often  the  case  with 
us  in  the  simpler  sort  of  eating-houses,  where  it  is  the 
neat  hand  of  Phyllis  that  serves  rather  than  that  of  the 
white-aproned  or  dress-coated  Strephon  of  either  color 
or  any  nationality.  My  profoundest  and  distinctest 
impression  of  Phyllidian  service  is  from  a  delightful 
lunch  which  I  had  one  golden  noonday  in  that  famous 
and  beautiful  house,  Crosby  Place,  Bishopsgate,  which 
remains  of  much  the  perpendicular  Gothic  state  in 
which  Sir  John  Crosby  proudly  built  it  from  his  grocer's 
and  woolman's  gains  in  1466.  It  had  afterwards  added 
to  it  the  glory  of  lodging  Richard  III.,  who,  both  as 

129 


LONDON    FILMS 

protector  and  as  sovereign-prince  made  appointments 
there,  in  Shakespeare's  tragedy  of  him,  for  the  Lady 
Anne;  for  Catesby,  and  for  the  "First  Murderer,"  whom 
he  praises  for  his  thoughtfulness  in  coming  for  the 
"warrant/'  that  he  might  be  admitted  to  their  victim. 

"Well  thought  upon;  I  have  it  here  about  me. 
When  you  have  done,  repair  to  Crosby  place." 

Probably  the  First  Murderer  lunched  there,  four  hundred 
years  ago,  "when  he  had  done  as  I  did  now";  but, 
in  the  mean  time,  Henry  VIII.  had  given  Crosby  Place 
to  a  rich  Italian  merchant,  one  Anthony  Bonvice; 
later,  ambassadors  had  been  received  in  it;  the  first 
Earl  of  Northampton  had  enlarged  it,  and  dwelt  in  it 
as  lord  mayor;  in  1638  the  East  India  Company  had 
owned  it,  and  later  yet,  in  1673,  it  was  used  for  a  Pres 
byterian  meeting-house;  but  in  1836  it  was  restored  to 
its  ancient  form  and  function.  I  do  not  know  how  long 
it  has  been  an  eating-house,  but  I  hope  it  may  long 
remain  so,  for  the  sensation  and  refreshment  of  Amer 
icans  who  love  a  simple  and  good  refection  in  a  medieval 
setting,  at  a  cost  so  moderate  that  they  must  ever  after 
wards  blush  for  it.  You  penetrate  to  its  innermost 
perpendicularity  through  a  passage  that  enclosed  a 
"quick-lunch"  counter,  and  climb  from  a  most  noble 
banquet-hall  crammed  with  hundreds  of  mercantile 
gentlemen  "feeding  like  one"  at  innumerable  little 
tables,  to  a  gallery  where  the  musicians  must  have  sat 
of  old.  There  it  was  that  Phyllis  found  and  neat- 
handedly  served  my  friend  and  me,  gently  experiencing 
a  certain  difficulty  in  our  combined  addition,  but  mas 
tering  the  arithmetical  problem  presently,  and  tak-n^r 
our  tip  with  an  air  of  surprise  which  it  never  created  in 

130 


TWICE-SEEN  SIGHTS  AND  HALF-FANCIED  FACTS 

any  of  the  English-learning  Swiss,  French,  or  Italian 
Strephons  who  elsewhe  e  ministered  to  us. 

The  waitresses  at  Crosby  Place  were  of  a  girlish  dig 
nity  which  never  expected  and  was  never  visibly  offered 
the  familiar  pleasantries  which  are  the  portion  of  that 
strange,  sad,  English  creation,  the  barmaid.  In  tens 
of  thousands  of  London  public-houses  she  stands  with 
her  hand  on  beer-pumps,  and  exchanges  jocose  banal 
ities  with  persons  beyond  the  counter  in  whose  dim 
regard  she  must  show  a  mere  blur  of  hardened  loveliness 
against  her  background  of  bottles  and  decanters;  but 
the  waitress  at  Crosby  Place  is  of  an  ideal  of  behavior 
as  fine  as  that  of  any  Phyllis  in  a  White  Mountain  hotel; 
and  I  thought  it  to  the  honor  of  the  lunchers  that  they 
seemed  all  to  know  it.  The  gentle  influence  of  her 
presence  had  spread  to  a  restaurant  in  the  neighborhood 
where,  another  day,  in  trying  for  Crosby  Place,  I  was 
misled  by  the  mediaeval  aspect  of  the  entrance,  and 
where  I  found  waitresses  again  instead  of  waiters.  But 
nowhere  else  do  I  remember  them,  always  excepting 
the  manifold  tea-houses  of  the  metropolis,  and  those 
repeated  A.  B.  C.  cold-lunch  places  of  the  Aerated  Bread 
Company,  where  a  chill  has  apparently  been  imparted 
to  their  bearing  by  the  temperature  of  the  food  they 
serve.  It  is  very  wholesome,  however,  and  it  may  be 
rather  that  a  New  England  severity  in  them  is  the 
effect  of  the  impersonal  relation  of  served  and  server 
which  no  gratuity  humanizes. 

It  would  not  be  easy  to  fathom  the  reason  for  the 
employment  of  girls  as  ushers  in  the  London  theatres. 
Perhaps  it  is  to  heighten  the  glamour  of  a  place  whose 
glamour  hardly  needs  heightening,  or  more  probably  it 
is  to  soften  the  asperity  of  the  play-goer  who  finds  him 
self  asked  sixpence  for  that  necessary  evil,  the  pro- 

131 


LONDON    FILMS 

gramme.  But,  now  I  come  to  think  of  it,  most  of  the 
play-goers  in  London  are  Englishmen  who  have  been 
always  used  to  paying,  ancestrally  and  personally,  six 
pence  for  their  programmes  and  feel  no  asperity  at  being 
so  plundered.  The  true  explanation  may  be  found, 
after  all,  in  the  discovery,  akin  to  the  government's,  that 
their  service  is  cheaper  than  men  ushers'  would  be. 
Children  of  as  tender  years  as  those  who  manage  the 
postal-stations,  go  round  with  tea  and  coffee  between 
the  acts,  as  with  us  the  myriad-buttoned  ice- water  boy 
passes;  but  whereas  this  boy  returns  always  with  a 
tray  of  empty  glasses,  I  never  saw  a  human  being  drink 
either  the  tea  or  coffee  offered  by  those  female  infants 
in  any  London  theatre. 

Let  it  be  not  supposed,  however,  that  I  went  much 
to  London  theatres.  I  went  perhaps  half  a  dozen  times 
in  as  many  weeks.  Once  settled  in  my  chair,  I  might 
well  have  fancied  myself  at  home  in  a  New  York  theatre, 
except  that  the  playing  seemed  rather  better,  and  the 
English  intonation  not  quite  so  scrupulously  English 
as  that  which  our  actors  have  produced  after  a  con 
scientious  study  of  the  original.  I  heard  that  the  Eng 
lish  actors  had  studied  the  American  accent  for  a  play 
imported  from  us;  but  I  did  not  see  this  play,  and  I 
am  now  very  sorry.  The  American  accent,  at  least, 
must  have  been  worth  hearing,  if  one  might  judge  from 
the  reproductions  of  our  parlance  which  I  heard  in 
private  life  by  people  who  had  sojourned,  or  merely 
travelled,  among  us.  These  were  so  unfailingly  delight 
ful,  that  one  could  not  have  wished  them  more  like. 

The  arriving  and  departing  of  theatre-goers  by  night 
adds  sensibly  to  the  brilliancy  of  the  complexion  of 
London.  The  flare  of  electricity  in  the  region  of  the 
theatres  made  a  midnight  summer  in  the  empty  heart 

132 


TWICE-SEEN  SIGHTS  AND  HALF-FANCIED  FACTS 

of  September,  and  recalled  the  gayety  of  the  season 
for  the  moment  to  the  desolate  metropolis.  But  this 
splendor  was  always  so  massed  and  so  vivid  that  even 
in  the  height  of  the  season  it  was  one  of  the  things  that 
distinguished  itself  among  the  various  immense  impres 
sions.  The  impressions  were  all,  if  I  may  so  try  to 
characterize  them,  transitory;  they  were  effects  of  ad 
ventitious  circumstances;  they  were  not  structural  in 
their  origin.  The  most  memorable  aspect  of  the  Strand 
or  Fleet  Street  would  not  be  its  moments  of  stately 
architecture,  but  its  moments  of  fog  or  mist,  when  its 
meanest  architecture  would  show  stately.  The  city 
won  its  moving  grandeur  from  the  throng  of  people  astir 
on  its  pavements,  or  the  streams  of  vehicles  solidifying 
or  liquefying  in  its  streets.  The  august  groups  of 
Westminster  and  Parliament  did  not  seem  in  them 
selves  spectacular;  they  needed  the  desertedness  of 
night,  and  the  pour  of  the  moon  into  the  comparative 
emptiness  of  the  neighborhood,  to  fill  them  out  to  the 
proportions  of  their  keeping  in  the  memory.  Is  Traf 
algar  Square  as  imposing  as  it  has  the  chance  of  being? 
It  is  rather  scattered  and  spotty,  and  wants  somehow 
the  magic  by  which  Paris  moves  the  spirit  in  the 
Place  de  la  Concorde,  or  Edinburgh  stirs  the  soul  with 
its  suggestions  of  old  steel-engravings  of  Athens.  Of 
course  St.  Paul's  has  a  prodigious  opportunity,  as  the 
multitudinous  omnibuses  roll  their  tide  towards  its 
fagade,  but  it  is  not  equal  to  its  opportunity.  Bit  for 
bit,  there  is  not  quite  any  bit  in  London  like  that  edi 
fice  of  smutted  Greek  on  which  the  newly  arrived 
American  looks  from  his  breakfast-table  in  his  Liverpool 
hotel,  and  realizes  that  he  is  in  England.  I  am  far  from 
thinking  the  black  of  the  coal-smoke  a  disadvantage  to 
the  London  architecture.  Pure  white  marble  is  all  very 

133 


LONDON   FILMS 

well,  and  the  faint  rose  that  the  stone  takes  from  a 
thousand  years  of  Italian  sunsets  is  not  bad;  but  the 
black  blur  on  the  surfaces  of  St.  Paul's  lends  wall  and 
dome  and  pillar  a  depth  of  shadow  which  only  the  elec 
tric  glare  of  tropic  suns  can  cast.  The  smoke  enriches 
the  columns  which  rise,  more  or  less  casually  as  it  seems, 
from  the  London  streets  and  squares,  and  one  almost 
hates  to  have  it  cleaned  off  or  painted  under  on  the 
fronts  of  the  aristocratic  mansions.  It  is  like  having 
an  old  picture  restored;  perhaps  it  has  to  be  done,  but 
it  is  a  pity. 

The  aristocratic  mansions  themselves,  the  hundreds  of 
large  houses  of  the  proudest  nobility  in  the  world,  are 
by  no  means  overwhelming.  They  hold  their  primacy 
among  the  other  pieces  of  domestic  architecture,  as  their 
owners  hold  their  primacy  in  society,  very  quietly,  if 
very  stolidly,  and  one  would  have,  I  fancy,  to  come 
much  harder  against  them  than  one  would  be  allowed 
to  do,  in  order  to  feel  their  quality  intimately.  There 
they  are,  in  Park  Lane,  and  the  park  neighborhood  of 
Piccadilly,  and  the  larger  and  lesser  streets  of  Mayfair, 
and  the  different  squares  and  gardens  and  places; 
and  certain  of  them  may  be  visited  at  certain  times 
on  application  by  the  tourist.  But  that  is  a  barren 
pleasure  which  one  easily  denies  oneself  in  behalf  of  the 
simpler  and  more  real  satisfactions  of  London.  The 
charm  of  the  vast  friendly  old  place  is  not  in  such  great 
houses,  as  its  grandeur  is  not  in  its  monuments.  Now 
and  then  such  a  house  gave  evidence  of  high  social 
preparation  during  the  season  in  flinging  out  curtained 
galleries  or  pavilions  towards  the  street,  if  it  stood  back; 
if  it  stood  flush  upon  the  sidewalk  a  group  of  fifteen  or 
twenty  flunkeys,  and  the  continual  arrest  of  carriages 
would  attest  its  inward  state ;  but  the  genius  of  the  race 

134 


TWICE-SEEN  SIGHTS  AND  HALF-FANCIED  FACTS 

is  to  keep  its  own  to  itself,  even  its  own  splendors  and 
grandeurs,  except  on  public  occasions  when  it  shines 
forth  in  incomparable  magnificence. 

If  London,  then,  is  not  habitually  grandiose,  or  mon 
umental,  or  beautiful,  what  is  it?  I  should  say,  with 
much  fear  of  contradiction  and  scornful  laughter,  that 
it  was  pretty,  that  it  was  endearingly  nooky,  cornery, 
curvy,  with  the  enchantment  of  trees  and  flowers  every 
where  mixed  with  its  civic  turmoil,  and  the  song  of 
birds  heard  through  the  staccato  of  cabs,  and  the  muffled 
bellow  of  omnibuses.  You  may  not  like  London,  but 
you  cannot  help  loving  it.  The  monuments,  if  I  may 
keep  coming  back  to  them,  are  plain  things,  often,  with 
no  attempt  upon  the  beholder's  emotions.  In  the  proc 
ess  of  time,  I  suspect  that  the  Albert  Memorial  will  not 
be  the  most  despised  among  them,  for  it  expresses,  even 
if  it  over-expresses,  a  not  ignoble  idea,  and  if  it  somewhat 
stutters  and  stammers,  it  does  at  last  get  it  out;  it  does 
not  stand  mum,  like  the  different  shy,  bashful  columns 
stuck  here  and  there,  and  not  able  to  say  what  they 
would  be  at. 

If  one  comes  to  the  statues  there  are,  of  course,  none 
so  good  as  the  Farragut  in  Madison  Square,  or  the  Logan 
on  the  Lake  front  at  Chicago,  and,  on  the  whole,  I  remem 
ber  those  at  Washington  as  better.  There  are  not  so 
many  English  kings  standing  or  riding  about  as  one 
would  expect;  the  English  kings  have,  indeed,  not  been 
much  to  brag  of  in  bronze  or  marble,  though  in  that  I 
do  not  say  they  are  worse  than  other  kings.  I  think, 
but  I  am  not  sure,  that  there  are  rather  more  public 
men  of  inferior  grade  than  kings,  though  this  may  be 
that  they  were  more  impressive.  Most  noticeable  was 
the  statue  of  Disraeli,  which,  on  Primrose  Day,  I  saw 
much  garlanded  and  banked  up  with  the  favorite  flower 

10  135 


LONDON    FILMS 

of  that  peculiarly  rustic  and  English  statesman.  He 
had  the  air  of  looking  at  the  simple  blossoms  and  for 
bearing  an  ironical  smile;  or  was  this  merely  the  fancy 
of  the  spectator?  Among  the  royal  statues  is  that  of 
the  Charles  whom  they  put  to  death,  and  who  was  so 
unequal  in  character  though  not  in  spirit  to  his  dread 
fate.  It  was  stolen  away,  and  somewhere  long  hid  by 
his  friends  or  foes,  but  it  is  now  to  be  seen  in  the  collec 
tion  of  Trafalgar  Square,  so  surely  the  least  imposing 
of  equestrian  figures  that  it  is  a  pity  it  should  ever 
have  been  found.  For  a  strikingly  handsome  man,  all 
his  statues  attest  how  little  he  lent  himself  to  sculpture. 
Not  far  away  is  another  equestrian  statue,  which 
never  failed  to  give  me  a  start,  when  I  suddenly  came 
upon  it  in  a  cab.  It  looked  for  an  instant  quite  like 
many  statues  of  George  Washington,  as  it  swept  the  air 
with  its  doffed  hat,  but  a  second  glance  always  showed 
it  the  effigy  of  George  the  Third,  bowing  to  posterity 
with  a  gracious  eighteenth-century  majesty.  If  it  were 
possible,  one  would  like  to  think  that  the  resemblance 
mentioned  had  grown  upon  it,  and  that  it  in  the  case 
of  Americans  was  the  poor  king's  ultimate  concession 
to  the  good -feeling  which  seems  to  be  reuniting  the 
people  he  divided. 


XIII 
AN   AFTERNOON   AT    HAMPTON   COURT 

THE  amiable  afternoon  of  late  April  which  we  chose 
for  going  to  Hampton  Court,  made  my  return  to 
the  place  after  an  interval  of  twenty  odd  years,  a  sort 
of  triumphal  progress  by  embowering  the  course  of  our 
train  with  plum  and  pear  and  cherry  trees  in  a  white 
mist  of  bloom.  Long  before  we  reached  the  country 
these  lovely  apparitions  abounded  in  the  back-yards  of 
the  little  city  and  suburban  dwellings  which  we  ran 
between,  and  the  bits  of  gardens  were  full  of  homely 
flowers;  when  we  got  to  open  expanses  where  nature 
could  find  room  to  spread  in  lawns  that  green  English 
turf  of  hers,  the  grass  was  starry  with  daisies  and  sunny 
with  dandelions.  The  poets  used  to  call  that  sort  of 
thing  enamelling,  and  it  was  not  distasteful,  in  our  ap 
proach  to  such  a  kindly,  artificial  old  place  as  Hampton 
Court,  to  suppose  that  we  were  passing  through  enam 
elled  meads.  Under  the  circumstances  we  might  have 
expected  our  train  to  purl,  in  default  of  a  stream  to 
perform  the  part,  and  I  can  truly  say  of  it  that  it  arrived 
with  us  in  a  mood  so  pastoral  that  I  still  cannot  under 
stand  why  we  did  not  ask  for  a  fly  at  the  station  in  a 
couplet  out  of  Pope.  We  got  the  fly  easily  enough  in  our 
prose  vernacular,  and  the  driver  hid  his  surprise  at  our 
taking  it  for  the  little  distance  to  the  palace,  which  it 
would  have  been  so  much  pleasanter  to  walk. 

137 


LONDON    FILMS 

Yet,  I  do  not  know  but  we  were  instinctively  wise  in 
coming  to  the  entrance  of  the  fine  old  paved  court 
yard  with  a  certain  suddenness:  if  we  had  left  it  much 
more  time  the  grass  between  the  bricks  might  have  over 
grown  them,  and  given  an  air  of  ruin  to  precincts  that 
for  centuries  have  been  held  from  decay,  in  the  keeping 
of  life  at  once  simple  and  elegant.  Though  Hampton 
Court  has  never  been  the  residence  of  the  English  kings 
since  the  second  George  gave  the  third  George  an  en 
during  disgust  for  it  by  boxing  the  ears  of  the  boy 
there  in  a  fit  of  grandfatherly  impatience,  it  has  been 
and  is  the  home  of  many  English  gentlefolk,  rarely 
privileged,  in  a  land  of  rare  privileges,  to  live  in  apart 
ments  granted  them  by  royal  favor.  In  former  times 
the  privilege  was  now  and  then  abused  by  tenants  who 
sublet  their  rooms  in  lodgings;  but  the  abuse  has  long 
been  broken  up,  and  now  there  cannot  be,  in  the  whole 
earth,  a  more  dignified  dwelling  for  the  dowager  of  a 
distinguished  or  merely  favored  family  than  such  as  the 
royal  pleasure  freely  grants  at  Hampton  Court.  Doubt 
less  the  crumpled  rose-leaf  is  there,  as  it  is  everywhere, 
but  unless  it  is  there  to  lend  a  faint  old-fashioned  odor 
as  of  pot-pourri  to  life  in  those  apartments,  I  do  not  be 
lieve  that  it  abounds  in  any  of  them. 

The  things  I  had  chiefly  in  mind  from  my  former 
visit  were  the  beauties  of  the  Stuarts'  time,  and  of  Sir 
Peter  Lely's  pencil,  in  the  galleries  of  the  palace,  and  the 
secular  grape-vine  which  I  found  in  its  familiar  place  in  a 
corner  of  the  conservatories.  I  will  not  say  which  I  paid 
my  devoirs  to  first,  but  if  it  was  the  vine,  I  can  truly 
declare  that  I  did  not  find  it  looking  a  day  older  since 
I  had  seen  it  last  in  1882.  It  could  hardly  have  said 
as  much  for  me,  but  I  reflected  that  I  had  not  been  two 
hundred  years  old  to  beenn  with,  and  consoled  myself 

tan 


AN  AFTERNOON  AT  HAMPTON   COURT 

as  I  could  in  my  consciousness  that  I  was  really  not  so 
young  by  twenty  odd  years  as  I  once  was.  Yet  I  think 
it  must  be  a  dull  and  churlish  nature  which  would  wish 
to  refuse  the  gentle  contemporaneity  offered  by  the 
unaging  antiquity  at  Hampton  Court.  I  should  at  this 
moment  be  glad  to  share  the  youthful  spirit  of  the 
sunken  garden  which  I  passed  on  my  way  to  the  famous 
vine,  and  in  which  with  certain  shapes  of  sculpture  and 
blossom,  I  admired  the  cockerels  snipped  out  of  arbor- 
vitse  in  the  taste  of  a  world  more  childlike  than  ours,  and 
at  the  same  time  so  much  older.  The  Dutch  taste  of  it 
all,  once  removed  from  a  French  taste,  or  twice  from  the 
Italian,  and  mostly  naturalized  to  the  English  air  by 
the  good  William  and  Mary  (who  were  perhaps  chiefly 
good  in  comparison  with  all  their  predecessors  from 
Henry  VIII.  down  to  the  second  and  worst  of  the 
Jamesos),  comes  to  its  most  endearing  expression  in 
that  long  arbor  of  clipped  wych-elms,  near  the  sunken 
garden,  called  Mary's  bower,  which,  on  our  April  after 
noon,  was  woolly  with  the  first  effort  of  its  boughs  to 
break  into  leaf. 

We  did  not  penetrate  its  perspective,  for  it  seems 
one  of  the  few  things  at  Hampton  Court  barred  to  the 
public.  Everywhere  else  the  place  is  free  to  the  visit 
or,  who  may  walk  as  he  pleases  on  its  garden  -  paths, 
or  over  its  close-woven  turf,  or  sit  out  of  the  sun  under 
its  dense  black  yews,  or  stroll  beneath  the  oaks  by  the 
banks  of  the  Long  Canal.  If  the  canal  is  Dutch,  the 
burly  trees  which  lounge  about  at  their  pleasure  in  the 
park,  impart  the  true  English  sentiment  to  the  scene; 
but,  for  my  part,  I  did  not  care  to  go  far  from  the  bor 
ders  of  the  beds  of  hyacinths  and  tulips  and  daffodils. 
The  grass  sighed  with  secret  tears  under  the  foot,  and 
it  was  better  to  let  the  fancy,  which  would  not  feel  the 

139 


LONDON    FILMS 

need  of  goloshes,  rove  disembodied  to  the  bosky  depths 
into  which  the  oaks  thickened  afar,  dim  amid  the  vapor- 
laden  air.  From  the  garden-plots  one  could  look,  dry- 
shod,  down  upon  the  Thames,  along  which  the  pretty 
town  of  Hampton  stretches,  and  in  whose  lively  current 
great  numbers  of  house-boats  tug  at  their  moorings.  The 
Thames  beside  the  palace  is  not  only  swift  but  wide, 
and  from  the  little  flowery  height  on  which  we  sur 
veyed  these  very  modernest  of  pleasure-craft  they  had  a 
remove  at  which  they  were  lost  in  an  agreeable  mystery. 
Even  one  which  we  were  told  belonged  to  a  rich  Amer 
ican  could  not  alienate  itself  from  the  past  when  there 
were  no  United  States,  and  very  few  united  colonies. 
The  poorest  American,  if  he  could  not  have  a  lodgement 
in  the  palace  (and  I  do  not  see  how  the  royal  bounty 
could  extend  to  one  of  our  disinherited  condition),  or 
one  of  the  pleasant  Hampton  houses  overlooking  the 
river,  might  be  glad  to  pass  the  long,  mild  English 
summer,  made  fast  to  the  willowy  bank  of  the  Thames, 
without  mosquitoes  or  malaria  to  molest  him  or  make 
him  afraid  in  his  dreamful  sojourn. 

By  all  the  laws  of  picturesque  dealing  with  other  times 
the  people  whose  portraits  we  had  seen  in  the  galleries 
ought  to  have  been  in  the  garden  or  about  the  lawns 
in  hospitable  response  to  the  interest  of  their  trans- 
Atlantic  visitors;  but  in  mere  common  honesty,  I  must 
own  they  were  not.  They  may  have  become  tired  of 
leaving  their  frames  at  the  summons  of  the  imagina 
tions  which  have  so  often  sought  to  steal  their  color  for 
a  dull  page,  and  to  give  the  charm  of  their  tragedy  or 
comedy  to  a  passage  which  otherwise  would  not  move. 
I  do  not  blame  them,  and  I  advise  the  reader  not  to 
expect  a  greater  complaisance  of  them  than  we  experi 
enced.  But  in  all  that  densely -storied  England,  where 

140 


AN  AFTERNOON  AT  HAMPTON  COURT 

every  scene  has  memories  accumulated  one  upon  an 
other  till  the  sense  aches  under  them,  I  think  there  is 
none  that  surpasses,  if  any  vies  with  this. 

What  makes  the  charm  of  Hampton  Court  is  that  from 
first  to  last  it  lies  in  an  air  clearer  of  fable  or  tradition 
than  that  which  involves  most  other  seats  of  power.  For 
we  do  like  to  know  what  we  are  dealing  with,  in  the  past 
as  in  the  present,  and  in  proportion  as  we  are  ourselves 
real,  we  love  reality  in  other  people,  whether  they  still 
live  or  whether  they  died  long  ago.  If  they  were  people 
of  eminence,  we  gratify  in  supreme  degree  the  inextin 
guishable  passion  for  good  society  innate  in  every  one 
by  consorting  with  royalties  and  titles  whom  we  may 
here  know  as  we  know  our  contemporary  equals,  through 
facts  and  traits  even  better  ascertained.  At  Hamp 
ton  Court  we  are  really  at  home  with  the  great  parvenu 
who  began  the  palace  in  such  magnificence  that  none 
of  the  successive  princes  have  excelled  it  in  design,  and 
who  when  his  fear  of  the  jealous  tyrant  compelled  him 
to  offer  it  to  his  king,  could  make  such  a  gift  as  no  sub 
ject  ever  before  laid  at  the  feet  of  a  sovereign.  The 
grandeur  of  Cardinal  Wolsey,  and  the  meanness  of  Henry 
VIII.,  in  the  sufferance  and  the  performance  of  that 
extortion  are  as  sensible  in  the  local  air  as  if  they  were 
qualities  of  some  event  in  our  own  day,  and  the  details 
of  the  tyrant's  life  in  the  palace  remain  matters  of  as 
clear  knowledge  as  those  of  some  such  tragedy  as  the 
recent  taking  off  of  the  Servian  king  and  queen.  The 
annals  are  so  explicit  that  no  veil  of  uncertainty  hangs 
between  us  and  the  lapse  of  Anne  Boleyn  from  the 
throne  to  the  scaffold;  we  see  Catherine  Howard  as  in 
an  instantaneous  photograph  escaping  from  her  prison- 
chamber  and  running  through  the  gallery  to  implore 
the  mercy  of  Henry  at  mass  in  the  chapel,  and,  as  if  a 

141 


LONDON    FILMS 

phonograph  were  reporting  them,  we  hear  the  wretched 
woman's  screams  when  she  is  pursued  and  seized  and 
carried  back,  while  the  king  continues  devoutly  in 
the  chapel  at  prayer.  The  little  life  of  Edward  VI. 
relates  itself  as  distinctly  to  the  palace  where  he  was 
born;  and  one  is  all  but  personally  witness  there  to 
the  strange  episode  of  Elizabeth's  semi -imprisonment 
while  Bloody  Mary,  now  sister  and  now  sovereign, 
balanced  her  fate  as  from  hand  to  hand,  and  hesi 
tated  whether  to  make  her  heiress  to  a  throne  or  to  a 
crown  of  martyrdom.  She  chose  wisely  in  the  end,  for 
Elizabeth  was  fitter  for  mortal  than  immortal  glory; 
and  for  the  earthly  fame  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  Eliza 
beth  in  her  turn  did  not  choose  unwisely,  however  un 
wittingly,  when  amid  her  coquetting  and  counselling 
with  her  statesmen  and  lovers  at  Hampton  Court  she 
drew  the  toils  closer  and  closer  about  her  victim.  But 
here  I  ought  to  own  that  all  this  is  a  reflected  light 
from  after  -  reading,  and  not  from  my  previous  knowl 
edge  of  the  local  history.  In  making  my  confession, 
however,  I  am  not  sure  that  the  sort  of  general  ig 
norance  I  brought  to  it  was  not  a  favorable  medium 
through  which  to  view  Hampton  Court.  If  you  come 
prepared  with  the  facts,  you  are  hampered  by  them  and 
hindered  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  moment's  chances. 
You  are  obliged  to  verify  them,  from  point  to  point, 
but  if  you  learn  them  afterwards  you  can  arrange  them 
in  your  memories  of  the  scene,  where  you  have  wandered 
vaguely  about  in  a  liberal  and  expansive  sense  of  un 
limited  historical  possibilities.  I  am  able  now  to  realize, 
without  having  missed  one  charm  of  our  spring  after 
noon  in  those  entrancing  bounds  that  the  son  of  Mary 
Stuart  was  as  fond  of  Hampton  Court,  when  he  came 
there  king,  as  Elizabeth  herself. 

142 


AN  AFTERNOON  AT  HAMPTON  COURT 

It  was  there  that  James  I.  confronted  and  confuted 
the  Puritan  divines  whom  he  invited  to  lay  their  com 
plaints  before  him,  and  there  in  his  pedantic  brow 
beating  so  hammered  their  hard  metal  that  he  tem 
pered  it  to  the  sword  soon  to  be  unsheathed  against  his 
son ;  it  was  there  that  Charles  began  the  famous  quarrel 
with  his  queen  which  ended  in  his  deporting  Henrietta 
Maria's  French  adherents,  or,  as  he  wrote  Buckingham, 
"dryving  them  away,  lyke  so  many  wylde  beastes  .  .  . 
and  soe  the  Devill  goe  with  them";  it  was  there  that 
more  importantly  when  an  honorable  captive  of  Parlia 
ment,  he  played  fast  and  loose,  after  the  fashion  he 
was  born  to,  with  Cromwell  and  the  other  generals 
who  would  have  favored  his  escape,  and  even  his  restora 
tion  to  the  throne,  if  they  could  have  found  any  truth 
in  him  to  rest  a  treaty  on.  It  was  at  Hampton  that 
Cromwell,  when  the  palace  became  his  home,  first  put 
on  something  of  royal  state,  always  with  lapses  through 
his  bonhomie  into  good-fellowship  with  his  officers,  and 
never  with  any  help  from  his  simple-hearted  wife;  that 
the  death  of  his  daughter,  amid  these  fitful  gbries,  broke 
his  heart,  and  he  drooped  and  sickened  to  his  own  end, 
which  a  change  to  the  different  air  of  Whitehall  did  not 
delay;  that  after  the  little  time  of  Richard  Cromwell's 
protectorate,  Hampton  Court  had  another  royal  lord  in 
the  second  Charles,  who  repeated  history  in  a  quarrel 
with  his  queen,  for  none  of  the  good  reasons  which  the 
first  Charles  had  in  the  like  contention.  The  father's 
tergiversations  with  Cromwell  may  be  supposed  to  have 
given  a  glamour  of  kingcraft  to  his  sojourn  later,  but  the 
bad  part  which  the  son  took  against  his  wife  was  without 
one  dignifying  circumstance.  One  reads  with  indigna 
tion  still  hot  how  he  brought  the  plain  little  Portuguese 
woman  there  for  their  honeymoon,  and  brightened  it 

143 


LONDON   FILMS 

for  her  by  thrusting  upon  her  the  intimacy  of  his  mis 
tress  Lady  Castlemaine;  how  he  was  firm  for  once  in  his 
yielding  life,  when  he  compelled  Clarendon  to  the  base 
office  of  coaxing  and  frightening  the  queen  who  had 
trusted  the  old  man  as  a  father;  how,  like  the  godless 
blackguard  he  was,  the  "merry  monarch,"  swore  "before 
Almighty  God,"  in  his  letter  to  the  chancellor,  that  he 
was  "resolved  to  go  through  with  this  matter"  of  forcing 
his  paramour  upon  his  wife,  with  the  added  threat, 
" and  whomsoever  I  find  my  Lady  Castlemaine's  enemy" 
in  it,  "I  do  promise  upon  my  word  to  be  his  enemy 
as  long  as  I  live."  It  is  less  wonderful  that  the  un 
happy  creature  whose  spirit  he  broke  should  have  been 
crushed,  than  that  the  English  people,  to  whom  the  king's 
bad  life  was  an  open  book,  should  have  suffered  him. 
But  perhaps,  even  this  was  less  wonderful  than  their 
patience  with  the  harsh  virtue  of  the  Puritans.  It  is 
not  well  to  be  good,  or  make  others  be  good  at  the  cost 
of  every  ease  and  grace  of  life,  and  though  it  seems 
strange  and  sad  to  us  republicans  that  the  mighty 
English  commonwealth  should  have  been  supplanted 
by  such  a  monarchy  as  that  restored  in  Charles,  it  may 
not  be  so  strange  as  it  was  sad.  The  life  which  attests 
itself  in  the  beauties  of  Lely  and  of  Kneller  on  the  walls 
of  Hampton  Court,  when  it  began  to  have  its  free  course 
was  doubtless  none  the  purer  for  having  been  frozen  at 
its  source.  The  world  is  a  long  time  being  saved  from 
itself,  and  it  has  had  to  go  back  for  many  fresh  starts. 
If  the  beautiful  women  whose  wickedness  is  recorded 
by  the  court  painters  in  a  convention  of  wanton  looks? 
rather  than  by  a  severally  faithful  portraiture,  can  be 
regarded  simply  as  a  part  of  the  inevitable  reaction 
from  a  period  when  men  had  allowed  women  to  be 
better,  we  shall  not  have  so  much  difficulty  in  showing 

144 


AN  AFTERNOON  AT  HAMPTON  COURT 

them  mercy.  If  only  after  a  lapse  of  twenty  years  they 
would  not  look  so  much  like  old  acquaintances  who  had 
kept  their  youth  too  well,  one  need  certainly  not  be 
shy  of  them.  Even  if  all  the  beauties  were  as  bad  as 
they  were  painted,  there  are  many  other  women  not 
ostensibly  bad  whose  pictures  fill  Hampton  Court;  but, 
knowing  what  galleries  are,  how  mortally  fatiguing  to 
every  fibre,  I  should  not  think  of  making  the  reader 
follow  me  through  the  long  rooms  of  the  palace,  and  I 
will  now  own  that  I  even  spared  myself  many  details  in 
this  second  visit  of  mine. 

Historically,  as  I  retrospectively  perceived,  it  never 
ceases  to  be  most  intimately  interesting  down  to  the  day 
of  that  third  George  who  had  his  ears  boxed  there.  The 
second  James  had  almost  as  little  to  do  with  it  as  our  last 
king;  he  was  in  such  haste  to  go  wrong  everywhere  else 
that  he  had  no  time  for  the  place  where  other  sovereigns 
before  and  after  him  took  their  pleasure.  But  William 
and  Mary  seemed  to  give  it  most  of  their  leisure;  to  the 
great  little  Dutchman  it  was  almost  as  dear  as  if  it  were 
a  bit  of  Holland,  and  even  more  to  his  mind  than  Ken 
sington.  His  queen  planted  it  and  kept  it  to  his  fancy 
while  he  was  away  fighting  the  Stuarts  in  Ireland;  and 
when  she  was  dead,  he  continued  to  pull  down  and  build 
up  at  Hampton  Court  as  long  as  he  lived,  laying  the 
sort  of  ruthless  hand  upon  its  antiquity  with  which  the 
unsparing  present  always  touches  the  past.  He  sick 
ened  towards  his  end  there,  and  one  day  his  horse 
stepping  into  a  mole-hill  when  the  king  was  hunting  (in 
the  park  where  the  kings  from  Henry  VIII.  down  had 
chased  the  deer),  fell  with  him  and  hurt  him  past  sur 
gery;  but  it  was  at  Kensington  that  he  shortly  after 
wards  died.  Few  indeed,  if  any  of  the  royal  dwellers 
at  Hampton  Court  breathed  their  last  in  air  supposed 

145 


LONDON   FILMS 

so  life-giving  by  Wolsey  when  he  made  it  his  seat. 
They  loved  it  and  enjoyed  it,  and  in  Queen  Anne's  time, 
when  under  a  dull  sovereign  the  civility  of  England 
brightened  to  Augustan  splendor,  the  deep-rooted  stem 
of  English  poetry  burst  there  into  the  most  exquisite 
artificial  flower  which  it  ever  bore;  for  it  was  at  Hamp 
ton  Court  that  the  fact  occurred,  which  the  fancy  of  the 
poet  fanned  to  a  bloom,  as  lasting  as  if  it  were  rouge,  in 
the  matchless  numbers  of  The  Rape  of  the  Lock. 

Such  pleasure  -  parties  as  that  in  which  the  lovely 
Arabella  Fermor  lost  her  curl  under  the  scissors  of  Lord 
Petre,  must  have  had  the  best  of  the  gayety,  in  the  time 
of  the  first  and  second  Georges,  for  Pope  himself,  writing 
of  it  in  one  of  his  visits  in  1717,  described  the  court  life 
as  one  of  dull  and  laborious  etiquette.  Yet  what  was 
fairest  and  brightest  and  wittiest,  if  not  wisest  in  Eng 
land  graced  it,  and  the  names  of  Bellenclen  and  Lepell 
and  Montagu,  of  Harvey  and  Chesterfield,  of  Gay  and 
Pope  and  Walpole,  flash  and  fade  through  the  air  that 
must  have  been  so  heavy  even  at  Hampton  Court  in 
these  reigns.  After  all,  it  is  the  common  people  who 
get  the  best  of  it  when  some  lordly  pleasure-house 
for  which  they  have  paid  comes  back  to  them,  as  palaces 
are  not  unapt  finally  to  do;  and  it  is  not  unimaginable 
that  collectively  they  bring  as  much  brilliancy  and 
beauty  to  its  free  enjoyment  as  the  kings  and  courtiers 
did  in  their  mutually  hampered  pleasures. 

Though  the  Georges  began  to  divide  the  palace  up 
into  the  apartments  for  the  kind  of  permanent  guests 
of  the  state  who  now  inhabit  them,  it  was  not  until 
well  into  the  time  of  the  late  queen  that  the  galleries 
and  gardens  were  thrown  open,  without  price  or  re 
striction,  to  the  public.  Whosever  the  instinct  or  in 
spiration  was,  the  graciousness  of  it  may  probably  be 

146 


AN   AFTERNOON   AT   HAMPTON   COURT 

attributed  to  the  mother-hearted  sovereign  whose  good 
ness  gave  English  monarchy  a  new  lease  of  life  in  the 
affections  of  her  subjects,  and  raised  loyalty  to  a  part 
of  their  religion.  I  suppose  that  actual  rags  and  dirt 
would  not  be  admitted  to  Hampton  Court,  but  I  doubt 
if  any  misery  short  of  them  would  be  excluded.  Our 
fellow-visitors  were  of  all  types,  chiefly  of  the  humbler 
English,  and  there  were  not  many  obvious  aliens  among 
them.  With  that  passion  and  pride  in  their  own  which 
sends  them  holidaying  over  the  island  to  every  point 
of  historic  or  legendary  interest,  and  every  scene  famous 
for  its  beauty,  they  strayed  about  the  grounds  and  gar 
den-paths  of  Hampton  Court  and  through  the  halls  of 
state,  and  revered  the  couches  and  thrones  of  the  dead 
kings  and  queens  in  their  bed-chambers  and  council- 
chambers,  and  perused  the  pictures  on  the  walls,  and 
the  frescoes  in  the  roofs.  Oftenest  they  did  not  seem 
persons  who  could  bring  a  cultivated  taste  to  their  en 
joyment,  but  fortunately  that  was  not  essential  to  it, 
and  possibly  it  was  even  greater  without  that.  They 
could  not  have  got  so  much  hurt  from  the  baleful  beau 
ties  of  Charles's  court  without  their  history  as  with  it, 
and  where  they  might  not  have  been  protected  by  their 
ignorance,  they  were  saved  by  their  preoccupation  with 
one  another,  for  they  mostly  hunted  the  objects  of  in 
terest  in  courting  couples. 

We  were  going,  after  we  had  shared  their  sight-seeing, 
to  enjoy  the  special  privilege  of  visiting  one  of  the  pri 
vate  apartments  into  which  the  palace  has  been  so 
comfortably  divided  up.  But  here,  I  am  sorry  to  say, 
I  must  close  the  door  in  the  reader's  face,  and  leave  him 
to  cool  his  heels  (I  regret  the  offensiveness  of  the  ex 
pression,  but  I  cannot  help  it)  on  the  threshold  of  the 
apartment,  at  the  top  of  the  historic  staircase  which 

147 


LONDON    FILMS 

he  will  have  climbed  with  us,  until  we  come  out  again. 
I  do  not  mind  telling  him  that  nothing  could  be  more 
charmingly  homelike,  and  less  like  the  proud  discomfort 
of  a  palace,  than  the  series  of  rooms  we  saw.  For  a 
moment,  also,  I  will  allow  him  to  come  round  into  the 
little  picturesque  court,  gay  with  the  window-gardens 
of  its  quaint  casements,  where  we  can  look  down  upon 
him  from  the  leads  of  our  apartment.  He  ought  to 
feel  like  a  figure  in  an  uncommonly  pretty  water- 
color,  for  he  certainly  looks  like  one,  under  the  clustering 
gables  and  the  jutting  lattices.  But  if  he  prefers  com 
ing  to  life  as  a  sight-seer  he  may  join  us  at  the  door  of 
Cardinal  Wolsey's  great  kitchen,  now  forming  part  of 
our  hostess's  domain.  The  vast  hearth  is  there  yet,  with 
its  crane  and  spit,  and  if  the  cardinal  could  come  back 
he  might  have  a  dinner  cooked  at  it  for  Edward  VII. 
with  very  little  more  trouble  than  for  Henry  VIII. 
three  or  four  hundred  years  ago.  "But  what  in  the 
world,"  the  reader  may  ask  me,  putting  his  hand  on  an 
old  sedan-chair,  which  is  somewhere  in  the  same  base 
ment,  if  not  in  the  kitchen  itself,  "is  this?"  I  answer 
him,  quite  easily:  "Oh,  that  is  the  Push,"  and  explain 
that  though  now  mounted  on  wheels  instead  of  poles, 
the  sedan-chair  is  still  in  actual  use,  and  any  lady- 
dweller  in  the  apartments  has  the  right  of  going  to  a 
dinner,  or  for  what  I  know  a  "rout"  in  it,  wherever  it 
can  be  propelled  within  the  precints  of  the  palace. 

I  suppose  it  is  not  taken  out  into  the  town,  and  I  do 
not  know  that  the  ladies  of  the  apartments  ever  visit 
there.  In  spite  of  this  misgiving,  Hampton  remains 
one  of  the  innumerable  places  in  England  where  I  should 
like  to  live  always.  Its  streets  follow  the  Thames,  or 
come  and  go  from  the  shores  so  pleasantly,  that  there 
is  a  sense  of  the  river  in  it  everywhere;  and  though  I 

148 


AN    AFTERNOON   AT    HAMPTON    COURT 

suppose  people  do  not  now  resort  to  the  place  so  much 
by  water  as  they  used,  one  is  quite  free  to  do  so  if  one 
likes.  We  had  not  thought,  however,  to  hire  a  water 
man  with  his  barge  in  coming,  and  so  we  poorly  went 
back  by  the  train.  I  say  poorly  in  a  comparative  sense 
only,  for  there  are  many  worse  things  in  the  world  than 
running  up  to  London  in  the  cool,  the  very  cool,  of  an 
April  evening  from  Hampton  Court.  At  such  an  hour 
you  see  the  glad  young  suburban  husbands,  who  have 
got  home  for  the  day,  digging  in  the  gardens  at  the  backs 
of  the  pretty  houses  which  your  train  passes,  and  the 
glad  young  wives,  keeping  round  after  them,  and  seeing 
they  do  not  make  play  of  their  work.  A  neat  maid  in  a 
cap  pushes  a  garden-roller  over  the  path,  or  a  peram 
bulator  with  a  never-failing  baby  in  it.  The  glimpse 
of  domestic  bliss  is  charming;  and  then  it  is  such  a  com 
fort  to  get  back  to  London,  which  seems  to  have  been 
waiting,  like  a  great  plain,  kind  metropolis-mother,  to 
welcome  you  home  again,  and  ask  what  you  would  rather 
have  for  dinner. 


XIV 
A   SUNDAY   MORNING   IN   THE   COUNTRY 

THE  invention  of  Week-Ends  is  a  feat  of  the  English 
social  genius  dating  since  long  after  my  stay  of 
twenty-odd  years  ago.  Like  so  many  other  English 
mysteries  it  is  very  simple,  and  consists  of  dedicating 
the  waste  space  of  time  between  Friday  afternoon  and 
Monday  forenoon  to  visits  out  of  town.  It  is  the  time 
when,  if  you  have  friends  within  reasonable,  or  even 
unreasonable  reach  of  London,  you  are  asked  down. 
Science  has  ascertained  that  in  this  interval  of  fifty  or 
sixty  hours  no  one  can  do  anything,  and  that  the  time 
had  better  be  frankly  given  up  to  pleasure. 

Yet,  for  the  alien  sojourner  in  London,  there  are  no 
such  intervals  between  sights,  or  perhaps  between  en 
gagements,  and  we  found  a  whole  week-end  beyond  our 
grasp,  though  ever  so  temptingly  entreated  to  spend  it 
here  or  there  in  the  country.  That  was  why  we  were 
going  down  to  the  place  of  a  friend  one  Sunday  morning 
instead  of  a  Friday  evening  and  coming  back  the  same 
day  instead  of  the  next.  But  we  were  glad  of  our  piece 
of  a  week-end,  and  we  had  reason  to  be  especially  grate 
ful  for  the  Sunday  when  we  had  it,  for  it  was  one  of  the 
most  perfect  of  its  kind.  There  used  to  be  such  Sun 
days  in  America  when  people  were  young,  and  I  suppose 
there  are  such  Sundays  there  yet  for  children;  but  if 
you  are  no  longer  so  very  young  you  will  be  more  apt 

150 


A   SUNDAY   MORNING   IN   THE   COUNTRY 

to  find  them  in  England,  where  Sunday  has  been  study 
ing,  ever  since  the  Romans  began  to  observe  it,  in  just 
what  proportion  to  blend  the  blue  and  white  in  its  wel 
kin,  and  to  unite  warmth  and  coolness  in  its  air. 

I  have  no  doubt  there  were  multitudes  going  to  church 
that  morning,  but  our  third-class  compartment  was 
filled  with  people  going  into  the  country  for  the  day; 
fathers  and  grandfathers  taking  the  little  ones  for  an 
endless  time  in  the  fields  and  woods,  which  are  often 
free  in  that  much-owned  England,  while  the  may  was 
yet  freshly  red  and  white  on  the  hawthorns  in  the  first 
week  in  June.  Among  our  fellow  -  passengers  that 
morning  a  young  mother,  not  much  older  than  her  five 
children,  sat  with  her  youngest  in  her  arms,  while  the 
other  four  perched  at  the  edge  of  the  seat,  two  on  each 
side  of  her,  all  one  stare  of  blue  eyes,  one  flare  of  red 
cheeks:  very  still,  very  good,  very  sweet;  when  it  came 
to  lifting  them  out  of  the  car  after  her,  the  public  had 
to  help.  One's  heart  must  go  with  these  holiday-makers 
as  they  began  to  leave  the  train  after  the  last  suburban 
stations,  where  they  could  feel  themselves  fairly  in  the 
country,  and  really  enter  upon  their  joy.  It  was  such 
motherly  looking  country,  and  yet  young  with  spring 
time,  and  of  a  breath  that  came  balmily  in  at  the  open 
car-windows;  and  the  trees  stood  about  in  the  meadows 
near  the  hedge-rows  as  if  they  knew  what  a  good  thing 
it  was  to  be  meadow-trees  in  England,  where  not  being 
much  good  for  fuel  or  lumber  they  could  stand  for  ages 
and  ages,  and  shelter  the  sheep  and  cattle  without 
danger  of  the  axe. 

At  our  own  station  we  found  our  host's  motor  waiting 

for  us,  and  after  waiting  for  some  one  else,  who  did  not 

come  by  the  next  train,  it  whisked  us  much  sooner  than 

we  could  have  wished  over  the  nine  miles  of  smooth  road 

«  151 


LONDON    FILMS 

stretching  to  his  house.  The  English  are  always  telling 
you,  if  you  are  an  American,  how  the  Americans  think 
nothing  of  distances,  and  they  apparently  derive  their 
belief  from  the  fact  that  it  is  a  thousand  miles  from 
New  York  to  Chicago,  and  again  some  two  thousand  to 
San  Francisco.  In  vain  you  try  to  explain  that  we 
do  not  step  casually  aboard  a  train  for  either  of  those 
places,  or,  indeed,  without  much  moral  and  material 
preparation.  But  perhaps  if  you  did  not  mind  being 
shorn  of  the  sort  of  fairy  glamour  which  you  are  aware 
attaches  to  you  from  our  supposed  contempt  of  space, 
you  could  make  out  a  very  pretty  case  against  them,  in 
convicting  them  of  an  even  greater  indifference  to  dis 
tances.  The  lengths  to  which  they  will  go  in  giving  and 
accepting  invitations  for  week-ends  are  amazing;  and  a 
run  from  London  down  to  Ultima  Thule  for  a  week  is 
thought  nothing  of,  or  much  less  of  than  a  journey  from 
New  York  to  Bar  Harbor.  But  the  one  is  much  more 
in  the  English  social  scheme  than  the  other  is  in  ours; 
and  perhaps  the  distance  at  which  a  gentleman  will  live 
from  his  railroad-station  in  the  country  is  still  more 
impressive.  The  American  commuter  who  drives  night 
and  morning  two  or  three  miles  after  leaving  and  before 
getting  his  train,  thinks  he  is  having  quite  drive  enough; 
if  he  drives  six  miles  the  late  and  early  guest  feels  him 
self  badly  used;  but  apparently  such  distances  are  not 
minded  in  England.  The  motor,  indeed,  has  now  come 
to  devour  them;  but  even  when  they  had  to  be  nibbled 
away  by  a  public  fly,  they  seem  not  to  have  been  re 
garded  as  evils. 

For  the  stranger  they  certainly  could  not  be  an  evil. 
Every  foot,  every  inch  of  the  way  was  delightful,  and 
we  only  wished  that  our  motor  could  have  conceived  of 
our  pleasure  in  the  wayside  things  to  which  custom 

152 


A   SUNDAY    MORNING   IN    THE   COUNTRY 

had  made  it  indifferent.  There  were  some  villages  in 
the  course  of  that  swift  flight  where  we  could  have 
willingly  spent  a  week  of  such  Sundays:  villages  with 
gables  and  thatches  and  tiles,  and  flowery  door-yards 
and  kitchen-gardens,  such  as  could  not  be  had  for 
millionaire  money  with  us,  and  villagers  in  their  church- 
going  best,  whom,  as  they  lived  in  the  precious  scene, 
our  lightning  progress  suffered  us  to  behold  in  a  sort 
of  cinematographic  shimmer.  Clean  white  shirt-sleeves 
are  the  symbol  of  our  race's  rustic  Sunday  leisure  every 
where;  and  the  main  difference  that  I  could  note  between 
our  own  farmer-folk  and  these  was  that  at  home  they 
would  be  sitting  on  the  top  of  rail-fences  or  stone-walls, 
and  here  they  were  hanging  over  gates;  you  cannot  very 
well  sit  on  the  tops  of  hedges. 

If  one  part  of  England  can  be  said  to  be  more  charm 
ing  than  another,  and  I  suppose  that  there  are  odds  in 
its  loveliness,  I  think  there  can  be  no  doubt  but  we  were 
that  day  in  one  of  the  most  beautiful  regions  within  an 
hour's  reach  of  London.  We  were  pretty  constantly 
mounting  in  our  motor-flight  from  the  station;  the  up 
lands  opened  round  us,  and  began  to  roll  far  away  tow 
ards  the  liberal  horizon,  in  undulations  that  were  very 
stately.  There  is  something,  indeed,  in  the  sufficiency 
of  English  downs  which  satisfies  without  surfeiting,  and 
this  we  had  from  the  windows  and  gardened  levels  of 
our  friends'  house  even  more  than  from  the  highroad, 
which  we  suddenly  left  to  approach  the  place  by  a  way 
of  its  own.  Mountains  would  have  been  out  of  key 
with  the  landscape;  downs  were  just  right. 

I  do  not  know  why  the  house  was  the  more  agreeable 
for  being  new,  and  for  being  the  effect  of  our  friends' 
immediate  and  not  their  ancestral  fancy,  quite  as  it 
would  have  been  with  most  of  our  friends'  country- 

153 


LONDON    FILMS 

houses  at  home.  We  certainly  had  not  come  to  England 
for  newness  of  any  kind,  but  we  liked  the  gardens  and  the 
shrubberies  being  new;  and  my  content  was  absolute 
when  I  heard  from  our  friends  that  they  had  at  one  time 
thought  of  building  their  house  of  wood :  the  fact  seemed 
to  restore  me  from  a  homesick  exile  to  the  wood-built 
continent  which  I  had  so  willingly  forsaken  only  a  few 
weeks  before. 

But  what  better  do  we  ever  ask  of  a  strange  land  than 
that  it  shall  render  us  some  fleeting  image  of  the  nearest 
and  dearest  things  of  home?  What  I  had  reasonably  or 
logically  come  to  England  for  was  nature  tamed  to  the 
hand  of  man;  but  whenever  I  came  upon  a  bit  of  some 
thing  wild,  something  savage  -  looking,  gaunt,  huge, 
rugged,  I  rejoiced  with  an  insensate  pleasure  in  its  like 
ness  to  the  roughest  aspect  of  America  that  association 
could  conjure  up.  I  dare  say  that  was  very  stupid,  but 
it  is  best  to  be  honest  in  such  matters  as  well  as  in  some 
others,  and  I  will  own  that  when  our  friends  took  us  the 
walk  over  the  downs  which  they  had  promised  us, 
nothing  could  have  gladdened  me  so  much  as  to  enter  a 
secret  andT  solemn  wood  of  immemorial  yews  by  a  cart- 
track  growing  fainter  and  fainter  as  it  left  the  fields,  and 
finally  forgetting  itself  altogether  in  the  sombre  depths 
of  shade.  Then  I  said  to  my  soul  that  it  might  have 
been  a  wood-road  in  the  White  Mountains,  mouldering 
out  of  memory  of  the  clearing  where  the  young  pines 
and  birches  had  grown  into  good-sized  trees  since  the 
giants  of  the  primeval  forest  were  slain  and  dragged  out 
over  its  snows  and  mosses. 

The  masses  of  the  red  may  and  the  white  may  which 
stood  here  and  there  in  the  border  of  the  yews,  might 
have  been  the  blossom  of  the  wilding  apple-trees  which 
often  guard  the  approaches  to  our  woods;  the  parent 

154 


A   SUNDAY   MORNING   IN    THE   COUNTRY 

hawthorns  were  as  large  and  of  the  same  lovely  tints, 
but  I  could  recall  nothing  that  was  quite  American 
when  once  we  had  plunged  into  the  shadow  of  these 
great  yews,  and  I  could  not  even  find  their  like  in  the 
English  literature  which  is  the  companion  of  American 
nature.  I  could  think  only  of  the  weird  tree  -  shapes 
which  an  artist  once  greatly  acclaimed,  and  then  so 
mocked  that  I  am  almost  ashamed  to  say  Gustave 
Dore,  used  to  draw;  but  that  is  the  truth,  and  I  felt  as 
if  we  were  walking  through  any  of  the  loneliest  of  his 
illustrations.  He  knew  how  to  be  true  to  such  mediaeval 
moods  of  the  great  mother,  and  we  owe  it  to  his  fame 
to  bear  what  witness  we  can  to  the  fact. 

The  yew-tree's  shade  in  Gray's  Elegy  had  not  pre 
pared  me  for  a  whole  forest  of  yews,  and  I  had  never 
imagined  them  of  the  vastness  I  beheld.  The  place  had 
its  peculiar  gloom  through  the  church-yard  associations 
of  the  trees,  but  there  was  a  rich,  Thomas  Hardyish 
flavor  in  the  lawless  fact  that  in  times  when  it  was  less 
protected  than  now,  or  when  its  wood  was  more  employed 
in  furniture-making,  predatory  emissaries  from  London 
used  to  come  out  to  the  forest  by  night  and  lop  away 
great  limbs  of  the  yews,  to  be  sold  to  the  shyer  sort  of 
timber-merchants.  From  time  to  time  my  host  put 
his  hand  on  a  broad  sawn  or  chopped  surface  where  a 
tree  had  been  so  mutilated  and  had  remained  in  a  dry 
decay  without  that  endeavor  some  other  trees  make  to 
cover  the  stump  with  a  new  growth.  The  down,  he 
told  us,  was  a  common,  and  any  one  might  pasture  his 
horse  or  his  cow  or  his  goose  on  its  grass,  and  I  do  not 
know  whose  forest  rights,  if  any  one's,  were  especially 
violated  in  these  cruel  midnight  outrages  on  the  yews; 
but  some  one  must  have  had  the  interest  to  stop  it. 

I  would  not  try  to  say  how  far  the  common  extended, 

155 


LONDON   FILMS 

or  how  far  its  privileges;  but  the  land  about  is  mostly 
held  in  great  estates,  like  most  of  the  land  in  England, 
and  no  doubt  there  are  signorial  rights  which  overlie 
the  popular  privileges.  I  fancied  a  symbol  of  these 
in  the  game  keeper-whom  we  met  coming  out  of  the 
wood,  brown-clad,  with  a  scarcely  touched  hat,  silently 
sweeping  through  the  gorse,  furtive  as  one  of  the  pheas 
ants  or  hares  to  which  he  must  have  grown  akin  in  his 
custody  of  them.  He  was  the  first  game-keeper  I  met 
in  England,  and,  as  it  happened,  the  last,  but  he  now 
seems  to  me  to  have  been  so  perfect  in  his  way  that  I 
would  not  for  the  sake  of  the  books  where  I  have  known 
so  many  of  his  sort,  have  him  the  least  different  from 
what  he  was. 

The  English  sun,  if  you  do  not  walk  much  in  it,  is 
usually  cool  and  pleasant,  but  you  must  not  take  liber 
ties.  By  the  tune  we  got  back  to  lunch  we  could  have 
believed,  with  no  homesick  yearning,  that  we  had 
been  in  an  American  heat.  But  after  lunch,  and  after 
the  talk  filling  the  afternoon  till  afternoon  tea-time, 
which  we  were  to  take  at  a  famous  house  in  the  neigh 
borhood,  the  temperature  was  all  right  again;  it  was 
more  than  all  right  in  the  cold  current  of  air  which  the 
motor  created.  In  the  course  of  that  post  -  luncheon 
talk  our  host  brought  out  a  small  porcelain  bust  of  Wash 
ington,  in  very  Continental  blue,  which  he  said  was  one 
of  great  numbers  made  in  that  neighborhood  at  the 
time  of  our  Revolution  to  express  the  feeling  of  our  Eng 
lish  sympathizers  in  the  struggle  which  gave  English 
liberty  a  new  lease.  One  reads  of  this  sympathy,  how 
wide  and  high  it  was,  and  one  knows  of  it  in  a  way,  but 
till  then,  with  that  witness,  I  had  to  own  I  had  not  real 
ized  it.  The  miniature  father-of-his-country  smiled  at 
our  ignorance  with  his  accustomed  blandness,  and  I  hope 

156 


A  SUNDAY  MORNING  IN  THE  COUNTRY 

he  will  never  regret  being  given  to  one  of  us  as  a  testi 
mony  of  the  amity  which  had  largely  endured  for  our 
nation  from  and  through  the  most  difficult  times.  The 
gift  lent  our  day  a  unique  grace,  and  I  could  only  hope 
that  it  might  be  without  a  surprise  too  painful  that  our 
English  Washington  would  look  upon  the  American 
Republic  of  his  creation  when  we  got  home  with 
him;  I  doubted  if  he  would  find  it  altogether  his 
ideal. 

The  motor-spin  was  over  the  high  crest  of  the  down 
to  the  house  where  we  were  going,  I  do  not  know  how 
many  miles,  for  our  afternoon  tea.  The  house  was 
famous,  for  being  the  most  perfect  Tudor  house  in  ex 
istence;  but  I  am  not  going  to  transfer  the  burden  of 
my  slight  knowledge  of  its  past  to  the  mind  of  the 
reader.  I  wrill  only  say  that  it  came  into  the  hands  of 
the  jovial  Henry  VIII.  through  the  loss  of  several  of 
its  owners'  heads,  a  means  of  acquisition  not  so  dis 
tasteful  to  him  as  to  them,  and  after  its  restitution 
to  the  much  decapitated  family  it  continued  in  their 
possession  till  a  few  years  ago.  It  remains  with  me  a 
vision  of  turrets  and  gables,  perfect  in  their  Tudor  kind, 
rising  upon  a  gentle  level  of  fields  and  meadows,  with 
nothing  dramatically  picturesque  in  the  view  from  its 
straight-browed  windows.  The  present  owner,  who 
showed  me  through  its  rooms  and  gardens  hurriedly  in 
consideration  of  our  early  train,  has  the  generous  pas 
sion  of  leaving  the  old  place  as  nearly  as  he  can  in  the 
keeping  of  its  past;  and  I  was  glad  to  have  him  to  agree 
with  me  that  the  Tudor  period  was  that  in  which  Eng 
lish  domestic  comfort  had  been  most  effectually  studied. 
But  my  satisfaction  in  this  was  much  heightened  by 
my  approval  of  what  he  was  simultaneously  saying 
about  the  prevalent  newspaper  unwisdom  of  not  pub- 

157 


LONDON    FILMS 

lishing  serial  fiction:  in  his  own  newspaper,  he  said,  he 
had  a  story  running  all  the  time. 

The  old  and  the  new  kiss  each  other  constantly 
in  England,  and  I  perceived  that  this  vividly  modern 
possessor  of  the  most  perfect  Tudor  house  existing  was, 
with  the  intense  actuality  of  his  interests  and  ambitions, 
as  English  as  the  most  feudal  presence  in  the  kingdom. 
When  we  came  out  of  the  house  and  walked  towards 
the  group  we  had  left  under  a  spreading  oak  (or  it  might 
have  been  an  elm;  the  two  are  much  of  the  same  habit 
in  England)  on  the  long,  wide  lawn,  one  might  have 
fancied  one's  self  in  any  most  picturesque  period  of  the 
past,  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  informality  of  the  men's 
dress.  Women  are  always  of  the  past  in  the  beauty 
of  their  attire,  and  those  whom  the  low  sun,  striking 
across  the  velvet  of  the  grass,  now  lighted  up  in  their 
pretty  gowns  of  our  day,  could  easily  have  stepped  out 
of  an  old  picture,  or  continued  in  it  as  they  sat  in  their 
wicker  chairs  around  the  afternoon  tea-table. 


XV 
FISHING   FOR   WHITEBAIT 

AN  incident  of  the  great  midsummer  heat,  was  an 
J\.  excursion  down  the  Thames  which  took  us  far  from 
the  society  atmosphere  so  relaxing  to  the  moral  fibre 
of  the  mere  witness  of  the  London  season.  The  change 
was  not  to  the  cooler  air  which  had  been  imagined,  but 
it  immersed  us  for  the  space  of  the  boat's  voyage  to  and 
from  Greenwich  among  those  social  inferiors  who  are 
probably  the  moral  betters  of  their  superiors,  but  whose 
company  does  not  always  seem  the  spiritual  baptism 
it  doubtless  is.  Our  fellow-passengers  were  distinctly 
of  the  classes  which  are  lower  as  well  as  middle,  and  the 
sole  worldly  advantage  they  had  of  us  was  that  they 
were  going  where  they  wished,  and  we  were  going  where 
we  must.  We  had  started  for  Richmond,  but  as  there 
proved  to  be  no  boat  for  Richmond,  we  decided  to  take 
the  boat  which  was  for  Greenwich,  and  consoled  pur- 
selves  with  visions  of  whitebait,  in  memory  and  honor 
of  many  parliamentary  and  literary  feasts  which  that 
fish  has  furnished.  A  whitebait  dinner,  what  would  not 
one  suffer  of  human  contiguity  for  it,  even  though  it 
could  be  only  a  whitebait  lunch,  owing  to  the  early 
hour? 

It  was  the  flaming  heart  of  the  forenoon  when  the 
Greenwich  boat  puffed  up  to  her  landing  at  Westminster 
Bridge,  and  the  lower  middle  classes  streamed  aboard. 

159 


LONDON   FILMS 

She  looked  very  lower  middle  class  herself,  poor  boat, 
and  she  was  of  a  failing  line  which  the  London  County 
Council  is  about  to  replace  by  a  line  of  municipal  boats, 
without  apparently  alarming,  in  the  English,  the  sen 
sibilities  so  apprehensive  of  anarchy  with  us  when  there 
is  any  talk  of  government  transportation.  The  official 
who  sold  me  tickets  might  have  been  training  himself 
for  a  position  on  the  municipal  line,  he  was  so  civilly 
explanatory  as  to  my  voyage;  so  far  from  treating  my 
inquiries  with  the  sardonic  irony  which  meets  question  in 
American  ticket-offices,  he  all  but  caressed  me  aboard. 
He  had  scarcely  ceased  reassuring  me  when  the  boat 
struck  out  on  the  thin  solution  of  dark  mud  which 
passes  for  water  in  the  Thames,  and  scuttled  down  the 
tide  towards  Greenwich. 

Her  course  lay  between  the  shabbiness  of  Southwark 
and  the  grandeur  of  the  Westminster  shore,  which  is 
probably  the  noblest  water-front  in  the  world.  Near 
and  far  the  great  imperial  and  municipal  and  palatial 
masses  of  architecture  lifted  themselves,  and,  as  we 
passed,  varied  their  grouping  with  one  another,  and 
with  the  leafy  domes  and  spires  which  everywhere 
enrich  and  soften  the  London  outlook.  Their  great 
succession  ought  to  culminate  in  the  Tower,  and  so  it 
does  to  the  mind's  eye,  but  to  the  body's  eye,  the  Tower 
is  rather  histrionic  than  historic.  It  is  like  a  scenic 
reproduction  of  itself,  like  a  London  Tower  on  the  stage; 
and  if  ever,  in  a  moment  of  Anglo-Saxon  expansion,  the 
County  Council  should  think  of  selling  it  to  Chicago,  to 
be  set  up  somewhere  between  the  Illinois  Central  and  the 
Lake,  New  York  need  not  hopelessly  envy  her  the  pur 
chase:  New  York  could  easily  build  a  London  Tower 
that  would  look  worthier  of  its  memories  than  the  real 
one,  without  even  making  it  a  sky-scraper. 

160 


FISHING   FOR   WHITEBAIT 

So  it  seems  at  the  moment,  but  I  am  not  sure  that  it 
is  so  true  as  it  is  that  after  passing  the  Tower  the  one 
shore  of  the  Thames  begins  to  lose  its  dignity  and  beauty, 
and  to  be  of  like  effect  with  the  other,  which  is  the 
Southwark  side,  and  like  all  the  American  river-sides 
that  I  remember.  Grimy  business  piles,  sagging  sheds, 
and  frowsy  wharves  and  docks  grieve  the  eye,  which  the 
shipping  in  the  stream  does  little  to  console.  That  is 
mostly  of  dingy  tramp-steamers,  or  inferior  Dutch  liners, 
clumsy  barges,  and  here  and  there  a  stately  brig  or 
shapely  schooner;  but  it  gathers  nowhere  into  the  for 
est  of  masts  and  chimneys  that  fringe  the  North  River 
and  East  River.  The  foul  tide  rises  and  falls  between 
low  shores  where,  when  it  ebbs,  are  seen  oozy  shoals  of 
slime,  and  every  keel  or  paddle  that  stirs  the  surface  of 
the  river  brings  up  the  loathsomeness  of  the  bottom. 

Coming  back  we  saw  a  gang  of  half-grown  boys  bath 
ing  from  the  slimy  shoals,  running  down  to  the  water 
on  planks  laid  over  them,  and  splashing  joyously  into 
the  filthy  solution  with  the  inextinguishable  gladness 
of  their  years.  They  looked  like  boys  out  of  the  pur 
lieus  of  Dickens's  poverty-world,  and  all  London  water 
side  apparitions  are  more  or  less  from  his  pages.  The 
elderly  waiter  of  the  forlorn  out-dated  hotel  to  which 
we  went  for  our  whitebait  lunch  at  Greenwich  was  as 
much  of  his  invention  as  if  he  had  created  him  from  the 
dust  of  the  place,  and  breathed  his  elderly-waiter-soul 
into  him.  He  had  a  queer  pseudo-respectful  shuffle 
and  a  sidelong  approach,  with  a  dawning  baldness  at 
the  back  of  his  head,  which  seemed  of  one  quality  with 
these  characteristics:  his  dress-coat  was  lustrous  with 
the  greasiness  of  long  serving.  Asked  for  whitebait,  he 
destroyed  the  illusion  in  which  we  had  come  at  a  blow. 
He  said  he  could  send  out  and  get  us  some  whitebait  if 

161 


LONDON   FILMS 

we  could  wait  twenty  minutes,  but  they  never  had  any 
call  for  it  now,  and  they  did  not  keep  it.  Then  he 
smiled  down  upon  us  out  of  an  apparently  humorous 
face  in  which  there  was  no  real  fun,  and  added  that  we 
could  have  salmon  mayonnaise  at  once.  Salmon 
mayonnaise  was  therefore  what  we  had,  and  except  that 
it  was  not  whitebait,  it  was  not  very  disappointing ;  we 
had  not  expected  much  of  it.  After  we  had  eaten  it, 
we  were  put  in  relations  with  the  landlord,  regarding  a 
fly  which  we  wished  to  take  for  a  drive,  in  the  absence 
of  whitebait.  But  a  fly  required,  in  Greenwich,  an 
interview  with  a  stableman  and  a  negotiation  which, 
though  we  were  assured  it  would  be  fairly  conducted, 
we  decided  to  forego,  and  contented  ourselves  with 
exploring  the  old  hostelry,  close  and  faint  of  atmos 
phere  and  of  a  smell  at  once  mouldy  and  dusty.  The 
room  that  was  called  Nelson's,  for  no  very  definite  rea 
son,  and  the  room  in  which  the  ministry  used  to  have 
their  whitebait  dinners  in  the  halcyon  days  before 
whitebait  was  extinct  in  Greenwich,  pretended  to  some 
state  but  no  beauty,  and  some  smaller  dining-rooms 
that  overhung  the  river  had  the  merit  of  commanding  a 
full  view  of  the  Isle  of  Dogs,  and  in  the  immediate  fore 
ground — it  was  as  much  earth  as  water  that  lapped  the 
shore — a  small  boy  wading  out  to  a  small  boat  and  pro 
viding  himself  a  sorrowful  evening  at  home  with  his 
mother,  by  soaking  his  ragged  sleeves  and  trousers  in 
the  solution.  Some  young  men  in  rowing  costume 
were  vigorously  pulling  in  a  heavy  row-boat  by  way  of 
filling  in  their  outing;  a  Dutch  steamer,  whose  acquaint 
ance  we  had  made  in  coming,  was  hurrying  to  get  out  of 
the  river  into  the  freshness  of  the  sea,  and  this  was  all 
of  Greenwich  as  a  watering-place  which  we  cared  to 
see. 

162 


FISHING   FOR   WHITEBAIT 

But  that  was  a  pleasant  landlord,  and  he  told  us  of 
balls  and  parties,  which,  though  not  imaginably  of  the 
first  social  quality,  must  have  given  his  middle-aging 
hostelry  a  gayety  in  winter  that  it  lacked  in  summer. 
He  applauded  our  resolution  to  see  the  pictures  in  the 
gallery  of  the  old  naval  college  on  the  way  back  to  our 
boat,  and  saw  us  to  the  door,  and  fairly  out  into  the 
blazing  sun.  It  was  truly  a  grilling  heat,  and  we  utilized 
every  scrap  of  shade  as  one  does  in  Italy,  running  from 
tree  to  tree  and  wall  to  wall,  and  escaping  into  every 
available  portico  and  colonnade.  But  once  inside  the 
great  hall  where  England  honors  her  naval  heroes  and 
their  battles,  it  was  deliciously  cool.  It  could  not  have 
been  that  so  many  marine  pieces  tempered  the  torrid 
air,  for  they  all  represented  the  heat  of  battle,  with 
fire  and  smoke,  and  the  work  of  coming  to  close  quarters, 
with 

"hot  gun-lip  kissing  gun." 

The  gallery  was  altogether  better  in  the  old  admirals 
and  other  sea-dogs  of  England  whose  portraits  relieved 
the  intolerable  spread  of  the  battle  scenes;  and  it  was 
best  of  all  in  the  many  pictures  and  effigies  and  relics 
of  Nelson,  who,  next  to  Napoleon,  was  the  wonder  of 
his  great  time.  He  looked  the  hero  as  little  as  Napoleon; 
everywhere  his  face  showed  the  impassioned  dreamer, 
the  poet;  and  once  more  gave  the  lie  to  the  silly  notion 
that  there  is  a  type  of  this  or  that  kind  of  great  men. 
When  we  had  fairly  settled  the  fact  to  our  minds,  we 
perceived  that  the  whole  place  we  were  in  was  a  temple 
to  Nelson,  and  that  whatever  minor  marine  deities  had 
their  shrines  there,  it  was  in  strict  subordination  to  him. 
England  had  done  what  she  could  for  them,  who  had 
done  so  much  for  her;  but  they  seem  consecrated  in 

163 


LONDON   FILMS 

rather  an  out-of-the-way  place,  now  that  there  is  no 
longer  whitebait  to  allure  the  traveller  to  their  worship; 
and,  upon  the  whole,  one  might  well  think  twice  before 
choosing  just  their  apotheosis. 

By  the  time  I  reached  this  conclusion,  or  inconclusion, 
it  was  time  to  grill  forth  to  our  boat,  and  we  escaped 
from  shade  to  shade,  as  before,  until  we  reached  the 
first-class  shelter  of  the  awning  at  her  stern.  Even 
there  it  was  crowded  in  agonizing  disproportion  to  the 
small  breeze  that  was  crisping  the  surface  of  the  solu 
tion;  and  fifteen  or  twenty  babies  developed  themselves 
to  testify  of  the  English  abhorrence  of  race-suicide 
among  the  lower  middle  classes.  They  were  mostly 
good,  poor  things,  and  evoked  no  sentiment  harsher 
than  pity  even  when  they  were  not  good.  Still  it  was 
not  just  the  sort  of  day  when  one  could  have  wished 
them  given  the  pleasure  of  an  outing  to  Greenwich. 
Perhaps  they  were  only  incidentally  given  it,  but  it 
must  have  been  from  a  specific  generosity  that  several 
children  in  arms  were  fed  by  their  indulgent  mothers 
with  large  slices  of  sausage.  To  be  sure  they  had  prob 
ably  had  no  whitebait. 


XVI 
HENLEY   DAY 

OUR  invitation  to  the  regatta  at  Henley,  included 
luncheon  in  the  tent  of  an  Oxford  college,  and  a 
view  of  the  races  from  the  college  barge,  which,  with 
the  barges  of  other  Oxford  colleges,  had  been  towed 
down  the  Thames  to  the  scene  of  the  annual  rivalry 
between  the  crews  of  the  two  great  English  universities. 
There  may  also  have  been  Cambridge  barges,  spirited 
through  the  air  in  default  of  water  for  towing  them  to 
Henley,  but  I  make  sure  only  of  a  gay  variety  of  house 
boats  stretching  up  and  down  the  grassy  margin  of  the 
stream,  along  the  course  the  rowers  were  to  take.  As 
their  contest  was  the  least  important  fact  of  the  occa 
sion  for  me,  and  as  I  had  not  then,  and  have  not  now,  a 
clear  notion  which  came  off  winner  in  any  of  the  events, 
I  will  try  not  to  trouble  the  reader  with  my  impressions 
of  them,  except  as  they  lent  a  vivid  action  and  formed 
a  dramatic  motive  for  one  of  the  loveliest  spectacles 
under  the  sun.  I  have  hitherto  contended  that  class- 
day  at  Harvard  was  the  fairest  flower  of  civilization, 
but,  having  seen  the  regatta  at  Henley,  I  am  no  longer 
so  sure  of  it. 

Henley  is  no  great  way  from  London,  and  the  quick 
pulse  of  its  excitement  could  be  sensibly  felt  at  the 
station,  where  we  took  train  for  it.  Our  train  was  one 
of  many  special  trains  leaving  at  quarter-hourly  inter- 

165 


LONDON    FILMS 

vals,  and  there  was  already  an  anxious  crowd  hurrying 
to  it,  with  tickets  entitling  them  to  go  by  that  train 
and  no  other.  It  was  by  no  means  the  youthful  crowd 
it  would  have  been  at  home,  and  not  even  the  over 
whelmingly  feminine  crowd.  The  chaperon,  who  now 
politely  prevails  with  us  in  almost  her  European  num 
bers,  was  here  in  no  greater  evident  force;  but  gray- 
haired  fathers  and  uncles  and  elderly  friends  much 
more  abounded;  and  they  looked  as  if  they  were  not 
altogether  bent  upon  a  vicarious  day's  pleasure.  The 
male  of  the  English  race  is  of  much  more  striking  pres 
ence  than  the  American;  he  keeps  more  of  the  native 
priority  of  his  sex  in  his  costume,  so  that  in  this  crowd, 
I  should  say,  the  outward  shows  were  rather  on  his 
part  than  that  of  his  demurely  cloaked  females,  though 
the  hats  into  which  these  flowered  at  top  gave  some  hint 
of  the  summer  loveliness  of  dress  to  be  later  revealed. 
They  were,  much  more  largely  than  most  railway-sta 
tion  crowds,  of  the  rank  which  goes  first  class,  and  in 
these  special  Henley  trains  it  was  well  to  have  booked 
so,  if  one  wished  to  go  in  comfort,  or  arrive  uncrumpled, 
for  the  second-class  and  third-class  carriages  were  packed 
with  people. 

There  seemed  so  many  of  our  fellow-passengers,  that 
reaching  Henley  in  the  condition  of  greed  and  grudge 
of  all  travellers  on  errands  of  pleasure,  we  made  haste 
to  anticipate  any  rush  for  the  carriages  outside  the 
station  which  were  to  take  us  to  the  scene  of  the  races. 
Oddly  enough  there  was  no  great  pressure  for  these 
vehicles,  or  for  the  more  public  brakes  and  char-a-bancs 
and  omnibuses  plying  to  the  same  destination;  and  so 
far  from  falling  victims  to  covert  extortion  in  the  matter 
of  fares,  we  found  the  flys  conscientiously  placarded 
with  the  price  of  the  drive.  This  was  about  double  the 

166 


HENLEY    DAY 

ordinary  price,  and  so  soon  does  human  nature  adjust 
itself  to  conditions  that  I  promptly  complained  to  an 
English  friend  for  having  had  to  pay  four  shillings  for  a 
drive  I  should  have  had  to  pay  four  dollars  for  at  home. 
In  my  resentment  I  tried  to  part  foes  with  my  driver, 
who  mildly  urged  that  he  had  but  a  few  days  in  the 
year  for  doubling  his  fares,  but  I  succeeded  so  ill  that 
when  I  found  him  waiting  for  me  at  the  end  of  the  day, 
I  amicably  took  him  again  for  the  return  to  the  station. 

Of  the  coming  and  going  through  the  town  of  Henley 
I  keep  the  sort  of  impression  which  small  English  towns 
give  the  passing  stranger,  of  a  sufficiently  busy  commer 
cial  life,  doing  business  in  excellent  shops  of  the  modern 
pattern,  but  often  housed  in  dwellings  of  such  a  familiar 
picturesqueness  that  you  wonder  what  old-fashioned 
annual  or  stage  -  setting  or  illustrated  Christmas  -  story 
they  are  out  of.  I  never  could  pass  through  such  a 
town  without  longing  to  stop  in  it  and  know  all  about 
it;  and  I  wish  I  could  believe  that  Henley  reciprocated 
my  longing,  on  its  bright  holiday  morning,  that  we  could 
have  had  each  other  to  ourselves  in  the  interest  of  an 
intimate  acquaintance.  It  looked  most  worthy  to  be 
known,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  it  is  full  of  history 
and  tradition  of  the  sort  which  small  towns  have  been 
growing  for  centuries  throughout  England. 

But  we  had  only  that  one  day  there,  and  in  our  haste 
to  give  it  to  the  regatta  we  could  only  make  sure  of 
driving  over  a  beautiful  picture-postal  bridge  on  our 
way  to  the  meadows  by  whose  brink  our  college  barge 
was  moored,  and  making  believe  to  tug  at  its  chain. 
It  was  really  doing  nothing  of  the  kind,  for  it  was  familiar 
with  boat-racing  in  the  Thames  where  the  Thames  is 
still  the  Isis  at  Oxford,  and  was  as  wholly  without  the 
motive  as  without  the  fact  of  impatience.  Like  many 
"  167 


LONDON    FILMS 

other  barges  and  house-boats  set  broadside  to  the  shore 
for  a  mile  up  and  down  as  closely  as  they  could  be  lined, 
it  was  of  a  comfortable  cabin  below  and  of  a  pleasant 
gallery  above,  with  an  awning  to  keep  off  the  sun  or 
rain,  whichever  it  might  be  the  whim  of  the  weather 
to  send.  But  that  day  the  weather  had  no  whims;  it 
was  its  pleasure  to  be  neither  wet  nor  hot,  but  of  a  de 
licious  average  warmth,  informed  with  a  cool  freshness 
which  had  the  days  of  the  years  of  youth  in  it.  In  fact, 
youth  came  back  in  all  the  holiday  sights  and  scents  to 
the  elderly  witness  who  ought  to  have  known  better 
than  to  be  glad  of  such  things  as  the  white  tents  in  the 
green  meadows,  the  gypsy  fires  burning  pale  in  the  sun 
light  by  the  gypsy  camps,  the  traps  and  carriages 
thronging  up  and  down  the  road,  or  standing  detached 
from  the  horses  in  the  wayside  shadow,  where  the 
trodden  grass,  not  less  nor  more  than  the  wandering 
cigar-whiff,  exhaled  the  memories  of  far-off  circus- 
days  and  Fourths  of  July.  But  such  things  lift  the 
heart  in  spite  of  philosophy  and  experience,  and  bid  it 
rejoice  in  the  relish  of  novelty  which  a  scene  every 
where  elementally  the  same  offers  in  slight  idiosyncra 
sies  of  time  and  place.  Certain  of  these  might  well 
touch  the  American  half-brother  with  a  sense  of  differ 
ence,  but  there  was  none  that  perhaps  more  suggested 
it  than  the  frank  English  proclamation  by  sign-board 
that  these  or  those  grounds  in  the  meadows  were  this 
or  that  lady's,  who  might  be  supposed  waiting  in  pro- 
prietory  state  for  her  guests  within  the  pavilion  of  her 
roped-off  enclosure.  Together  with  this  assertion  of 
private  right,  and  the  warning  it  implied,  was  the  ex 
pression  of  yet  elder  privilege  in  the  presence  of  the 
immemorial  wanderers  who  had  their  shabby  camps 
by  the  open  wayside  and  offered  the  passer  fortune  at 

168 


HENLEY   DAY 

so  low  a  rate  that  the  poorest  pleasurer  could  afford 
to  buy  a  prophecy  of  prosperity  from  them;  I  do  not 
know  why  they  proposed  to  sell  with  these  favorable 
destinies  small  brushes  and  brooms  of  their  own  make. 

These  swarthy  aliens,  whom  no  conditions  can  nat 
uralize,  are  a  fact  of  every  English  holiday  without 
which  it  would  not  be  so  native,  as  the  English  them 
selves  may  hereafter  be  the  more  peculiarly  and  in 
tensely  insular  through  the  prevalence  of  more  and 
more  Americans  among  them.  Most  of  our  fellow- 
guests  on  that  Oxford  barge  were  our  fellow-country 
men,  and  I  think  now  that  without  their  difference 
there  would  have  been  wanting  an  ult  mately  pene 
trating  sense  of  the  entirely  English  keeping  of  the  affair. 
The  ardor  of  our  fresh  interest  lent,  I  hope,  a  novel  zest 
to  our  English  hosts  for  the  spectacle  which  began  to 
offer  itself  so  gradually  to  our  delight,  and  which  seemed 
to  grow  and  open  flower-like  from  the  water,  until  it  was 
a  blossom  which  covered  the  surface  with  its  petals. 

The  course  for  the  races  was  marked  off  midway  from 
either  shore  by  long  timbers  fastened  end  to  end  and 
forming  a  complete  barrier  to  the  intrusion  of  any  of 
the  mere  pleasure-craft.  Our  own  shore  was  sacred 
to  barges  and  house-boats;  the  thither  margin,  if  I  re 
member  rightly,  was  devoted  to  the  noisy  and  muscular 
expansion  of  undergraduate  emotion,  but,  it  seems  to 
me,  that  farther  up  on  the  grounds  which  rose  from  it 
were  some  such  tents  and  pavilions  as  whitened  our  own 
side.  Still  the  impression  of  something  rather  more 
official  in  the  arrangements  of  that  shore  persists  with 
me. 

There  was  a  long  waiting,  of  course,  before  the  rowing 
began,  but  as  this  throughout  was  the  least  interest  of 
the  affair  for  any  one  but  the  undergraduates,  and  the 

169 


LONDON    FILMS 

nearest  or  fairest  friends  of  the  crews,  I  will  keep  my 
promise  not  to  dwell  on  it.  Each  event  was  announced 
some  minutes  beforehand  by  the  ringing  of  a  rather  un 
impressive  hand-bell.  Then  a  pistol-shot  was  fired; 
and  then,  after  the  start  far  up  the  course,  the  shells 
came  sweeping  swiftly  down  towards  us.  I  noticed 
that  the  men  rowed  in  their  undershirts,  and  not  naked 
from  their  waists  up  as  our  university  crews  do,  or  used 
to  do,  and  I  missed  the  Greek  joy  I  have  experienced  a.t 
New  London,  when  the  fine  Yale  and  Harvard  fellows 
slipped  their  tunics  over  their  heads,  and  sat  sculptu 
resque  in  their  bronze  nudity,  motionlessly  waiting  for 
the  signal  to  come  to  eager  life.  I  think  that  American 
moment  was  more  thrilling  than  any  given  moment 
at  Henley;  and  though  there  is  more  comfort  in  a  col 
lege  barge,  and  more  gentle  seclusion  for  the  favored 
spectator,  I  am  not  going  to  own  that  it  equals  as  a 
view-point  the  observation-train,  with  its  successive 
banks  of  shouting  and  glowing  girls,  all  a  flutter  of 
handkerchiefs  and  parasols,  which  used  to  keep  abreast 
of  the  racing  crews  beside  the  stately  course  of  the 
Connecticut  Thames.  Otherwise  I  think  it  best  to 
withhold  comparisons,  lest  the  impartial  judge  should 
decide  in  favor  of  Henley. 

There  was  already  a  multitude  of  small  boats  within 
the  barriers  keeping  the  race-course  open,  and  now  and 
then  one  of  these  crossed  from  shore  to  shore.  They 
were  of  all  types:  skiffs  and  wherries  and  canoes  and 
snub-nosed  punts,  with  a  great  number  of  short,  sharply 
rounded  craft,  new  to  my  American  observance,  and 
called  cockles,  very  precisely  adapted  to  contain  one 
girl,  who  had  to  sit  with  her  eyes  firmly  fixed  on  the 
young  man  with  the  oars,  lest  a  glance  to  this  side  or 
that  should  overset  the  ticklishly  balanced  shell.  She 

170 


HENLEY   DAY 

might  assist  her  eyes  in  trimming  the  boat  with  a  red  or 
yellow  parasol,  or  a  large  fan,  but  it  appeared  that  her 
gown,  a  long  flow  as  she  reclined  on  the  low  seat,  must 
be  of  one  white  or  pale  lavender  or  cowslip  or  soft  pink, 
lest  any  turmoil  of  colors  in  it  should  be  too  much  for 
the  balance  she  sought  to  keep.  The  like  precaution 
seemed  to  have  been  taken  in  the  other  boats,  so  that 
while  all  the  more  delicate  hues  of  the  rainbow  were 
afloat  on  the  stream,  there  was  nothing  of  the  kaleido 
scope's  vulgar  variety  in  the  respective  costumes.  As 
the  numbers  of  the  boats  momentarily  increased,  it  was 
more  and  more  as  if  the  church-parade  of  Hyde  Park 
had  taken  water,  and  though  in  such  a  scene  as  that 
which  spread  its  soft  allure  before  us,  it  was  not  quite 
imaginable  that  all  the  loveliness  one  saw  was  of  the 
quality  of  that  in  the  consecrated  paddocks  near  Stan 
hope  Gate,  neither  was  it  imaginable  that  much  of  the 
beauty  was  not  as  well  -  born  as  it  was  well  -  dressed. 
Those  house-boats  up  and  down  the  shore  must  mainly 
have  been  peopled  by  persons  of  worldly  worth,  and  of 
those  who  had  come  from  the  four  quarters  to  Henley 
for  the  day,  not  every  one  could  have  been  an  actress 
with  her  friends,  though  each  contributed  to  the  effect 
of  a  spectacle  not  yet  approached  in  any  pantomime. 
There  was  a  good  deal  of  friendly  visiting  back  and 
forth  among  the  house-boat  people ;  and  I  was  told  that 
it  was  even  more  than  correct  for  a  young  man  to  ask  a 
house-boat  girl  to  go  out  with  him  in  one  of  the  small 
boats  on  the  water,  but  how  much  this  contributed  to 
keep  the  scene  elect  I  do  not  know. 

If  one  looked  steadily  at  the  pretty  sight,  it  lost  reality 
as  things  do  when  too  closely  scrutinized,  and  became  a 
visionary  confluence  of  lines  and  colors,  a  soft  stir  of 
bloom  like  a  flowery  expanse  moved  by  the  air.  This 

171 


LONDON    FILMS 

ecstatic  effect  was  not  exclusive  of  facts  which  kept 
one's  feet  well  on  the  earth,  or  on  the  roof  of  one's 
college  barge.  Out  of  that  "giddy  pleasure  of  the 
eyes"  business  lifted  a  practical  front  from  time  to  time, 
and  extended  a  kind  of  butterfly  net  at  the  end  of  a 
pole  so  long  that  it  would  reach  anywhere,  and  collected 
pennies  for  the  people  in  boats  who  had  been  singing  or 
playing  banjos  or  guitars  or  even  upright  pianos.  For, 
it  must  be  explained,  there  were  many  in  that  aquatic 
crowd  who  were  there  to  be  heard  as  well  as  seen,  and 
this  gave  the  affair  its  pathos.  Not  that  negro  min 
strelsy  as  the  English  have  interpreted  the  sole  Amer 
ican  contribution  to  histrionic  art,  is  in  itself  pathetic, 
except  as  it  is  so  lamentably  far  from  the  original;  but 
that  any  obvious  labor  which  adds  to  our  gayety  is 
sorrowful;  and  there  were  many  different  artists  there 
who  were  working  hard.  Sometimes  it  was  the  man 
who  sang  and  the  woman  who  played ;  but  it  was  always 
the  woman  who  took  up  the  collection:  she  seemed  to 
have  the  greater  enterprise  and  perseverance.  Of  course 
in  the  case  of  the  blackened  minstrels,  some  man  ap 
pealed  to  the  love  of  humor  rather  than  the  love  of 
beauty  for  the  bounty  of  the  spectators.  In  the  case 
of  an  old-time  plantation  darkey  who  sang  the  familiar 
melodies  with  the  slurring  vowels  and  wandering  as 
pirates  of  East  London,  and  then  lifted  a  face  one-half 
blackened,  the  appeal  to  the  love  of  humor  was  more 
effective  than  the  other  could  have  been.  A  com 
pany  of  young  men  in  masks  with  a  piano  in  their  boat, 
which  one  played  while  another  led  the  singing  in  an 
amazing  falsetto,  were  peculiarly  successful  in  collecting 
their  reward,  and  were  all  the  more  amusingly  eager  be 
cause  they  were,  as  our  English  friends  believed,  under 
graduates  on  a  lark. 

172 


HENLEY   DAY 

They  were  no  better-natured  than  the  rest  of  the 
constantly  increasing  multitude.  The  boats  thickened 
upon  the  water  as  if  they  had  risen  softly  from  the  bot 
tom  to  which  any  panic  might  have  sent  them;  but  the 
people  in  them  took  every  chance  with  the  amiability 
which  seems  to  be  finally  the  thing  that  holds  England 
together.  The  English  have  got  a  bad  name  abroad 
which  certainly  they  do  not  deserve  at  home;  but  per 
haps  they  do  not  think  foreigners  worthy  the  considera 
tion  they  show  one  another  on  any  occasion  that  masses 
them.  One  lady,  from  her  vantage  in  the  stern  of  her 
boat,  was  seen  to  hit  the  gentleman  in  the  bow  a  tremen 
dous  whack  with  her  paddle;  but  he  merely  looked 
round  and  smiled,  as  if  it  had  been  a  caress,  which  it 
probably  was,  in  disguise.  But  they  were  all  kind  and 
patient  with  one  another  whether  in  the  same  boat  or 
not.  Some  had  clearly  not  the  faintest  notion  how  a 
boat  should  be  managed;  they  bumped  and  punched 
one  another  wildly;  but  the  occupants  of  the  boat 
assailed  simply  pushed  off  the  attacking  party  with  a 
smiling  acceptance  of  its  apology,  and  passed  on  the 
incident  to  another  boat  before  or  beside  them.  From 
the  whole  multitude  there  came  not  one  loud  or  angry 
note,  and,  for  any  appearance  of  authority  on  the  scene 
it  was  altogether  unpoliced,  and  kept  safe  solely  by  the 
universal  good-humor.  The  women  were  there  to  show 
themselves  in  and  at  their  prettiest,  and  to  see  one 
another  as  they  lounged  on  the  cushions  or  lay  in  the 
bottoms  of  the  boats,  or  sat  up  and  displayed  their 
hats  and  parasols;  the  men  were  there  to  make  the 
women  have  a  good  time.  Neither  the  one  nor  the 
other  seemed  in  the  least  concerned  hi  the  races,  which 
duly  followed  one  another  with  the  ringing  of  bells  and 
firing  of  pistols,  unheeded.  By  the  time  the  signal 

173 


LONDON   FILMS 

came  to  clear  the  course  for  the  crews,  the  pleasure- 
craft  pushed  within  the  barriers  formed  a  vast,  soft 
ly  undulating  raft  covering  the  whole  surface  of  the 
water,  so  that  you  could  have  walked  from  the  barrier 
to  the  shore  without  dipping  foot  in  the  flood.  I  have 
suggested  that  the  situation  might  have  had  its  perils. 
Any  panic  must  have  caused  a  commotion  that  would 
have  overturned  hundreds  of  the  crazy  craft,  and  plunged 
their  freight  to  helpless  death.  But  the  spectacle  smiled 
securely  to  the  sun,  which  smiled  back  upon  it  from  a 
cloud-islanded  blue  with  a  rather  more  than  English 
ardor;  and  we  left  it  without  anxiety,  to  take  our  lunch 
eon  in  the  pavilion  pitched  beside  our  barge  on  the  grassy 
shore. 

To  this  honest  meal  we  sat  comfortably  down  at  long 
tables,  and  served  one  another  from  the  dishes  put 
before  us.  There  was  not  the  ambitious  variety  of 
salads  and  sweets  and  fruits  and  ices,  which  I  have 
seen  at  Harvard  Class-Day  spreads,  but  there  were  the 
things  that  stay  one  more  wholesomely  and  substan 
tially,  and  one  was  not  obliged  to  eat  standing  and 
hold  one's  plate.  Everything  in  England  that  can  be 
is  adjusted  to  the  private  and  personal  scale;  everything 
with  us  is  generalized  and  fitted  to  the  convenience  of  the 
greatest  number.  Later,  we  all  sat  down  together  at 
afternoon  tea,  a  rite  of  as  inviolable  observance  as 
breakfast  itself  in  that  island  of  fixed  habits. 

I  believe  some  races  were  rowed  while  we  were  eating 
and  drinking,  but  we  did  not  mind.  We  were  not  there 
for  the  races,  but  for  the  people  who  were  there  for  the 
races;  or  who  were  apparently  so.  In  the  mean  time, 
the  multitude  of  them  seemed  to  have  increased,  and 
where  I  had  fancied  that  not  one  boat  more  could  have 
been  pressed  in,  half  a  dozen  had  found  room.  The 

174 


HENLEY   DAY 

feat  must  have  been  accomplished  by  main  strength 
and  awkwardness,  as  the  old  phrase  is.  It  was  no  place 
indeed  for  skill  to  evince  itself;  but  people  pushed  about 
in  the  most  incredible  way  when  they  tried  to  move, 
though  mostly  they  did  not  try;  they  let  their  boats  lie 
still,  and  sway  with  the  common  movement  when  the 
water  rose  and  sank,  or  fluctuated  unseen  beneath  them. 
There  were  more  and  more  people  of  the  sort  that  there 
can  never  be  enough  of,  such  as  young  girls  beautifully 
dressed  in  airy  muslins  and  light  silks,  sheltered  but  not 
hidden  by  gay  parasols  floating  above  their  summer 
hats.  It  was  the  fairy  multitude  of  Harvard  Class-Day 
in  English  terms,  and  though  Henley  never  came  at 
any  moment  to  that  prodigiously  picturesque  expres 
sion  which  Class-Day  used  to  reach  when  all  its  youthful 
loveliness  banked  itself  on  the  pine-plank  gradines  en 
closing  the  Class-Day  elm,  and  waited  the  struggle  for 
its  garlands,  yet  you  felt  at  Henley  somehow  in  the 
presence  of  inexhaustible  numbers,  drawing  themselves 
from  a  society  ultimately,  if  not  immediately,  vaster. 
It  was  rather  dreadful  perhaps  to  reflect  that  if  all  that 
brilliant  expanse  of  fashion  and  beauty  had  been  en 
gulfed  in  the  hidden  Thames  it  could  have  been  instantly 
replaced  by  as  much  more,  not  once  but  a  score  of 
times. 

I  will  not  pretend  that  this  thought  finally  drove  me 
from  the  scene,  for  I  am  of  a  very  hardy  make  when  it 
comes  to  the  most  frightful  sort  of  suppositions.  But 
the  afternoon  was  wearing  away,  and  we  must  go  some 
time.  It  seemed  better  also  to  leave  the  gayety  at  its 
height:  the  river  covered  with  soft  colors,  and  the 
barges  and  house-boats  by  the  brink,  with  their  com 
panies  responsive  in  harmonies  of  muslin  and  gauze 
and  lace  to  those  afloat;  the  crowds  on  the  opposite 

175 


LONDON   FILMS 

shore  in  constant  movement,  and  in  vivid  agitation 
when  the  bell  and  the  pistol  announced  a  racing  event. 
We  parted  with  our  friends  on  the  barge,  and  found  our 
way  through  the  gypsy  crones  squatted  on  the  grass, 
weaving  the  web  of  fate  and  selling  brooms  and  brushes 
in  the  intervals  of  their  mystical  employ,  or  cosily  gos 
siping  together;  and  then  we  took  for  the  station  the 
harmless  fly  which  we  had  forever  renounced  as  preda 
tory  in  the  morning. 

It  was  not  yet  the  rush-hour  for  the  run  back  to  Lon 
don,  and  we  easily  got  an  empty  compartment,  in  which 
we  were  presently  joined  by  a  group  of  extremely  hand 
some  people,  all  of  a  southern  type,  but  differing  in  age 
and  sex.  There  were  a  mother  and  a  daughter,  and  a 
father  evidently  soon  to  become  a  father-in-law,  and 
the  young  man  who  was  to  make  him  so.  The  women 
were  alike  in  their  white  gowns,  and  alike  in  their  dark 
beauty,  but  the  charms  of  the  mother  had  expanded  in 
a  bulk  incredible  of  the  slender  daughter.  She  and  her 
father  were  rather  silent,  and  the  talk  was  mainly  be 
tween  the  mother  and  the  future  of  the  girl.  They  first 
counted  up  the  day's  expenses,  and  the  cost  of  each  dish 
they  had  had  at  luncheon.  "  Then  there  was  the  cham 
pagne,"  the  lady  insisted.  "It  isn't  so  much  when  you 
count  that  out;  and  you  know  we  chose  to  have  it." 
They  all  discussed  the  sum,  and  agreed  that  if  they 
had  not  wanted  the  champagne  their  holiday  would 
not  have  cost  inordinately.  "And  now,"  the  mother 
continued  to  the  young  man,  "  you  must  order  that  box 
for  the  opera  as  soon  as  ever  you  reach  the  hotel.  Order 
it  by  telephone.  Give  the  girl  your  boutonniere;  that 
will  jolly  her.  Get  a  four-guinea  box  opposite  the  royal 
box." 

As  she  sat  deeply  sunk  in  the  luxurious  first-class 

176 


HENLEY    DAY 

seat,  her  little  feet  could  not  reach  the  floor,  and  the 
effort  with  which  she  bent  forward  was  heroic.  The 
very  pretty  girl  in  the  corner  at  her  elbow  was  almost 
eclipsed  by  her  breadth  and  thickness;  and  the  old  gen 
tleman  in  the  opposite  corner  spoke  a  word  now  and 
then,  but  for  the  most  part  silently  smelled  of  tobacco. 
The  talk  which  the  mother  and  future  son-in-law  had 
to  themselves,  though  it  was  so  intimately  of  their  own 
affairs,  we  fancied  more  or  less  carried  on  at  us.  I  do 
not  know  why  they  should  have  wished  to  crush  us 
with  their  opulence  since  they  would  not  have  chosen 
to  enrich  us;  but  I  have  never  had  so  great  a  sense  of 
opulence.  They  were  all,  as  I  said,  singularly  hand 
some  people,  in  the  dark,  liquid,  lustrous  fashion  which 
I  am  afraid  our  own  race  can  never  achieve.  Yet  with 
all  this  evident  opulence,  with  their  resolute  spirits,  with 
their  satisfaction  in  having  spent  so  much  on  a  luncheon 
which  they  could  have  made  less  expensive  if  they  had 
not  chosen  to  gratify  themselves  in  it,  with  their  pros 
pect  of  a  four-guinea  box,  opposite  the  box  of  royalty, 
at  the  opera,  it  seemed  to  me  they  were  rather  pathetic 
than  otherwise.  But  I  am  sure  they  would  have  never 
imagined  themselves  so,  and  that  in  their  own  eyes  they 
were  a  radiantly  enviable  party  returning  from  a  brilliant 
day  at  Henley. 


XVII 
AMERICAN   ORIGINS— MOSTLY   NORTHERN 

THE  return  in  mid-September  to  the  London  which 
we  left  at  the  end  of  July,  implicates  a  dramatic 
effect  more  striking  than  any  possible  in  the  mere  tour 
ist's  experience.  In  the  difference  between  this  London 
and  that  you  fully  realize  the  moral  and  physical  magni 
tude  of  the  season.  The  earlier  London  throbbed  to 
bursting  with  the  tide  of  manifold  life ;  the  later  London 
lies  gaunt,  hollow,  flaccid,  and  as  if  spent  by  the  mere 
sense  of  what  it  has  been  through.  The  change  is 
almost  incredible,  and  the  like  of  it  is  nowhere  to  be 
witnessed  with  us.  It  seems  a  sort  of  bluff  to  say  that  a 
city  which  still  holds  all  its  six  millions  except  a  few 
hundred  thousands,  is  empty,  but  that  is  the  look  a  cer 
tain  part  of  London  has  in  September,  for  the  brilliant 
and  perpetual  movement  of  those  hundred  thousands 
was  what  gave  it  repletion. 

The  fashion  that  fluttered  and  glittered  along  Picca 
dilly  and  the  streets  of  shops  is  all  away  at  country- 
houses  or  at  the  sea-side  or  in  the  mountains  of  the 
island  or  the  continent.  The  comely  young  giants 
who  stalked  along  the  pavement  of  Pall  Mall  or  in  the 
paths  of  the  Park  are  off  killing  grouse ;  scarcely  a  livery 
shows  itself;  even  the  omnibus -tops  are  depopulated; 
long  rows  of  idle  cabs  are  on  the  ranks;  the  stately  pro 
cession  of  diners-out  flashing  their  white  shirt-fronts  at 

178 


AMERICAN    ORIGINS— MOSTLY   NORTHERN 

nightfall  in  interminable  hansoms  has  vanished;  the 
tormented  regiments  of  soldiers  are  at  peace  in  their 
barracks;  a  strange  quiet  has  fallen  on  that  better  quarter 
of  the  town  which  is  really,  or  unreally,  the  town.  With 
this  there  is  an  increase  of  the  homelike  feeling  which  is 
always  present,  with  at  least  the  happy  alien,  in  London; 
and  what  gayety  is  left  is  cumulative  at  night  and  cen 
tralized  in  the  electric-blazing  neighborhoods  of  the 
theatres.  There,  indeed,  the  season  seems  to  have 
returned,  and  in  the  boxes  of  the  playhouses  and  the 
stalls  fashion  phantasmally  revisits  one  of  the  scenes  of 
its  summer  joy. 

One  day  in  Piccadilly,  in  a  pause  of  the  thin  rain,  I 
met  a  solitary  apparition  in  the  diaphanous  silks  and 
the  snowy  plumes  of  hat  and  boa  which  the  sylphs  of  the 
church  parade  wore  in  life  through  those  halcyon  days 
when  the  tide  of  fashion  was  highest.  The  apparition 
put  on  a  bold  front  of  not  being  strange  and  sad,  but 
upon  the  whole  it  failed.  It  may  have  been  an  im 
pulse  from  this  vision  that  carried  me  as  far  as 
Hyde  Park,  where  I  saw  not  a  soul,  either  of  the  quick 
or  the  dead,  in  the  chilly  drizzle,  save  a  keeper  cleaning 
up  the  edges  of  the  road.  In  the  consecrated  closes, 
where  the  vanished  children  of  smartness  used  to  stand 
or  sit,  to  go  and  come  like  bright  birds,  or  flowers  walk 
ing,  the  inverted  chairs  lay  massed  together  or  scattered, 
with  their  legs  in  the  air,  on  the  wet  grass,  and  the  drip 
ping  leaves  smote  damply  together  overhead.  Another 
close,  in  Green  Park  the  afternoon  before,  however,  I 
saw  devoted  to  frequenters  of  another  sort.  It  had 
showered  over-night,  and  the  ground  must  still  have  been 
wet  where  a  score  of  the  bodies  of  the  unemployed,  or  at 
least  the  unoccupied,  lay  as  if  dead  in  the  sun.  They 
were  having  their  holiday,  but  they  did  not  make  me 

179 


LONDON    FILMS 

feel  as  if  I  were  still  enjoying  my  outing  so  much  as 
some  other  things:  for  instance,  the  colored  minstrelsy, 
which  I  had  heard  so  often  at  the  sea-side  in  August,  and 
which  reported  itself  one  night  in  the  Mayfair  street 
which  we  seemed  to  have  wholly  to  ourselves,  and 
touched  our  hearts  with  the  concord  of  our  native  airs 
and  banjos.  We  were  sure  they  were  American  darkies, 
from  their  voices  and  accents,  but  perhaps  they  were  not 
as  certainly  so  as  the  poor  little  mother  was  English  who 
came  down  the  place  at  high  noon  with  her  large  baby 
in  her  arms,  swaying  it  from  side  to  side  as  she  sang  a 
plaintive  ballad  to  the  skies,  and  scanned  the  windows 
for  some  relenting  to  her  want. 

The  clubs  and  the  great  houses  of  Mayfair,  which  the 
season  had  used  so  hard,  were  many  of  them  putting 
themselves  in  repair  against  the  next  time  of  festivity, 
and  testifying  to  the  absence  of  their  world.  One  day 
I  found  the  solitude  rather  more  than  I  could  bear  with 
out  appeal  to  that  vastly  more  multitudinous  world  of 
the  six  millions  who  never  leave  London  except  on  busi 
ness.  I  said  in  my  heart  that  this  was  the  hour  to  go  and 
look  up  that  emotion  which  I  had  suspected  of  lying  in 
wait  for  me  in  St.  Paul's,  and  I  had  no  sooner  mounted 
an  omnibus-top  for  the  journey  through  Piccadilly,  the 
Strand,  and  Fleet  Street,  than  I  found  the  other  omni 
bus-tops  by  no  means  so  depopulated  as  I  had  fancied. 
To  be  sure,  the  straw  hats  which  six  weeks  before  had 
formed  the  almost  universal  head-covering  of  the  'bus- 
top  throngs  were  now  in  a  melancholy  minority,  but 
they  had  not  so  wholly  vanished  as  they  vanish  with  us 
when  September  begins.  They  had  never  so  much  rea 
son  to  be  here  as  with  us,  and  they  might  have  had  al 
most  as  much  reason  for  lingering  as  they  had  for  com 
ing.  I  still  saw  some  of  them  among  the  pedestrians  as 

180 


AMERICAN    ORIGINS— MOSTLY   NORTHERN 

well  as  among  the  omnibus-toppers,  and  the  pedestrians 
abashed  me  by  their  undiminished  myriads.  As  they 
streamed  along  the  sidewalks,  in  a  torrent  of  eager  life, 
and  crossed  and  recrossed  among  the  hoofs  and  wheels 
as  thickly  as  in  mid-July,  they  put  me  to  shame  for  my 
theory  of  a  decimated  London.  It  was  not  the  tenth 
man  who  was  gone,  nor  the  hundredth,  if  even  it  was 
the  thousandth.  The  tremendous  metropolis  mocked 
with  its  millions  the  notion  of  nobody  left  in  town  be 
cause  a  few  pleasurers  had  gone  to  the  moors  or  the 
mountains  or  the  shores. 

Yet  the  season  being  so  dead  as  it  was  in  the  middle 
of  September,  the  trivial  kodak  could  not  bear  to  dwell 
on  the  mortuary  aspects  which  the  fashionable  quarters 
of  London  presented.  It  turned  itself  in  pursuance 
of  a  plan  much  cherished  and  often  renounced,  to  seek 
those  springs  or  sources  of  the  American  nation  which 
may  be  traced  all  over  England,  and  which  rather  abound 
in  London,  trusting  chances  for  the  involuntary  glimpses 
which  are  so  much  better  than  any  others,  when  you 
can  get  them.  In  different  terms,  and  leaving  apart  the 
strained  figure  which  I  cannot  ask  the  reader  to  help  me 
carry  farther,  I  went  one  breezy,  cool,  sunny,  and  rainy 
morning  to  meet  the  friend  who  was  to  guide  my  steps, 
and  philosophize  my  reflections  in  the  researches  before 
us.  Our  rendezvous  was  at  the  church  of  All  Hallows 
Barking,  conveniently  founded  just  opposite  the  Mark 
Lane  District  Railway  Station,  some  seven  or  eight  hun 
dred  years  before  I  arrived  there,  and  successively  de 
stroyed  and  rebuilt,  but  left  finally  in  such  good  repair 
that  I  could  safely  lean  against  it  while  waiting  for  my 
friend,  and  taking  note  of  its  very  sordid  neighborhood. 
The  street  before  it  might  have  been  a  second-rate 
New  York,  or,  preferably,  Boston,  business  street,  ex- 

181 


LONDON   FILMS 

cept  for  a  peculiarly  London  commonness  in  the  smutted 
yellow  brick  and  harsh  red  brick  shops  and  public- 
houses.  There  was  a  continual  coming  and  going  of 
trucks,  wagons,  and  cabs,  and  a  periodical  appearing  of 
hurried  passengers  from  the  depths  of  the  station,  all 
heedless,  if  not  unconscious,  of  the  Tower  of  London 
close  at  hand,  whose  dead  were  so  often  brought  from 
the  scaffold  to  be  buried  in  that  church. 

Our  own  mission  was  to  revere  its  interior  because 
William  Penn  was  baptized  in  it,  but  when  we  had  got 
inside  we  found  it  so  full  of  scaffolding  and  the  litter  of 
masonry,  and  the  cool  fresh  smell  of  mortar  from  the  res 
torations  going  on  that  we  had  no  room  for  the  emotions 
we  had  come  prepared  with.  With  the  compassion  of  a 
kindly  man  in  a  plasterer's  spattered  suit  of  white,  we 
did  what  we  could,  but  it  was  very  little.  I  at  least  was 
not  yet  armed  with  the  facts  that,  among  others,  the  head 
less  form  of  Archbishop  Laud  had  been  carried  from  the 
block  on  Tower  Hill  and  laid  in  All  Hallows;  and  if  I 
had  known  it,  I  must  have  felt  that  though  Laud  could 
be  related  to  our  beginnings  through  his  persecution 
of  the  Puritans,  whom  he  harried  into  exile,  his  interment 
in  All  Hallows  was  only  of  remote  American  interest. 
Besides,  we  had  set  out  with  the  intention  of  keeping 
to  the  origins  of  colonies  which  had  not  been  so  much 
studied  as  those  of  New  England,  and  we  had  first 
chosen  Penn  as  sufficiently  removed  from  the  forbidden 
ground.  But  we  had  no  sooner  left  the  church  where 
he  was  baptized,  to  follow  him  in  the  much  later  interest 
of  his  imprisonment  in  the  Tower,  than  we  found  our 
selves  in  New  England  territory  again.  For  there, 
round  the  first  corner,  under  the  foliage  of  the  trees  and 
shrubs  that  I  had  been  ignorantly  watching  from  the 
church,  as  they  stiffly  stirred  in  the  September  wind, 

182 


AMERICAN   ORIGINS— MOSTLY   NORTHERN 

was  that  Calvary  of  so  many  martyr  -  souls,  Tower 
Hill. 

It  is  no  longer,  if  it  ever  was,  a  hill,  or  even  a  per 
ceptible  rise  of  ground,  but  a  pleasant  gardened  and 
planted  space,  not  distinguishable  from  a  hundred 
others  in  London,  with  public  offices  related  to  the 
navy  closing  it  mostly  in,  but  not  without  unofficial 
public  and  private  houses  on  some  sides.  It  was  per 
haps  because  of  its  convenience  for  his  professional 
affairs  that  Admiral  Penn  had  fixed  such  land-going 
residence  as  an  admiral  may  have,  in  All  Hallows  Bark 
ing  parish,  where  his  great  son  was  born.  "Your  late 
honored  father,"  his  friend  Gibson  wrote  the  founder  of 
Pennsylvania,  "dwelt  upon  Great  Tower  Hill,  on  the 
east  side,  within  a  court  adjoining  to  London  Wall." 
But  the  memories  of  honored  father  and  more  honored 
son  must  yield  in  that  air  to  such  tragic  fames  as  those 
of  Sir  Thomas  More,  of  Strafford,  and  above  these  and 
the  many  others  in  immediate  interest  for  us,  of  Sir 
Harry  Vane,  once  governor  of  Massachusetts,  who  died 
here  among  those  whom  the  perjured  second  Charles 
played  false  when  he  came  back  to  the  throne  of  the 
perjured  first  Charles.  In  fact  you  can  get  away  from 
New  England  no  more  in  London  than  in  America;  and 
if  in  the  Tower  itself  the  long  captivity  of  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  somewhat  dressed  the  balance,  we  were  close 
upon  other  associations  which  outweighed  the  discovery 
of  the  middle  south  and  of  tobacco,  a  thousandfold. 

Perhaps  Tower  Hill  has  been  cut  down  nearer  the 
common  level  than  it  once  was,  as  often  happens  with 
rises  of  ground  in  cities,  or  perhaps  it  owed  its  distinc 
tion  of  being  called  a  hill  to  a  slight  elevation  from  the 
general  London  flatness.  Standing  upon  it  you  do  not 
now  seem  lifted  from  that  grade,  but  if  you  come  away, 

*3  183 


LONDON   FILMS 

Tower  Hill  looms  lofty  and  large,  as  before  you  approach 
ed,  with  its  head  hid  in  the  cloud  of  sombre  memories 
which  always  hangs  upon  it.  The  look  of  the  Tower 
towards  it  is  much  more  dignified  than  the  theatrical 
river-front,  but  worse  than  this  even  is  the  histrionic 
modern  bridge  which  spans  the  Thames  there  as  at  the 
bottom  of  a  stage.  We  took  an  omnibus  to  cross  it, 
and  yet  before  we  were  half-way  over  the  bridge,  we 
had  reason  to  forget  the  turrets  and  arches  which  look 
as  if  designed  and  built  of  pasteboard.  There,  in  the 
stretch  of  the  good,  dirty,  humble  Thames,  between 
Tower  Bridge  and  London  Bridge,  was  the  scene  of  the 
fatally  mistaken  arrest  of  Cromwell,  Hampden,  and 
their  friends,  by  Charles  I.,  when  they  were  embarking 
for  New  England,  if  indeed  the  thing  really  happened. 
Everybody  used  to  think  so,  and  the  historians  even  said 
so,  but  now  they  begin  to  doubt:  it  is  an  age  of  doubt. 
This  questionably  memorable  expanse  of  muddy  water 
was  crowded,  the  morning  I  saw  it,  with  barges  resting 
in  the  iridescent  slime  of  the  Southwark  shoals,  and  with 
various  craft  of  steam  and  sail  in  the  tide  which  danced 
in  the  sun  and  wind  along  the  shore  we  were  leaving. 
It  is  tradition,  if  not  history,  that  just  in  front  of  the 
present  custom-house  those  mighty  heirs  of  destiny 
were  forced  to  leave  their  ship  and  abide  in  the  land 
they  were  to  ennoble  with  the  first  great  republican 
experiment  of  our  race,  after  the  commonwealth  failed 
to  perpetuate  itself  in  England,  perhaps,  because  of  a 
want  of  imagination  in  both  people  and  protector,  who 
could  not  conceive  of  a  state  without  an  hereditary 
ruler.  The  son  of  Cromwell  must  follow  his  father, 
till  another  son  of  another  father  came  back  to  urge 
his  prior  claim  to  a  primacy  that  no  one  has  ever  a 
right  to  except  the  direct  and  still  renewed  choice  of  the 

184 


AMERICAN   ORIGINS— MOSTLY   NORTHERN 

citizens.  It  is  all  very  droll  at  this  distance  of  time 
and  place;  but  we  ourselves  who  grew  up  were  there  had 
never  been  kings  to  craze  the  popular  fancy,  could  not 
conceive  of  a  state  without  one  for  yet  a  hundred  years 
and  more,  and  even  then  some  of  us  thought  of  having 
one.  The  lesson  which  the  English  Commonwealth  now 
had  set  itself,  though  lost  upon  England,  was  at  last 
read  in  its  full  meaning  elsewhere,  and  the  greatest  of 
American  beginnings  was  made  when  Cromwell  was 
forced  ashore  from  his  ship  in  front  of  the  Custom 
house,  if  he  was.  There  is  a  very  personable  edifice 
now  on  the  site  of  whatever  building  then  stood  there, 
and  it  marks  the  spot  with  sufficiently  classical  grace, 
whether  you  look  down  at  it  from  the  Tower  Bridge,  as  I 
did,  first,  or  up  at  it  from  London  Bridge,  as  I  did,  last. 
We  were  crossing  into  Southwark  at  the  end  of  Tower 
Bridge  that  we  might  walk  through  Tooley  Street,  once 
a  hot-bed  of  sedition  and  dissent,  which  many  of  its 
inhabitants  made  too  hot  to  hold  them,  and  so  fled 
away  to  cool  themselves  in  different  parts  of  the  Amer 
ican  wilderness.  It  was  much  later  that  the  place 
became  famous  for  the  declaration  of  the  three  tailors 
of  Tooley  Street  who  began,  or  were  fabled  to  have 
begun,  a  public  appeal  with  the  words :  "  We,  the  people 
of  England,"  and  perhaps  the  actuality  of  Tooley  Street 
is  more  suggestive  of  them  than  of  those  who  went  into 
exile  for  their  religious  and  political  faith.  In  the 
former  time  the  region  was,  no  doubt,  picturesque  and 
poetic,  like  all  of  that  old  London  which  is  so  nearly 
gone,  but  now  it  is  almost  the  most  prosaic  and  common 
place  thoroughfare  of  the  newer  London.  It  is  wholly 
mean  as  to  the  ordinary  structures  which  line  its  course, 
and  which  are  mainly  the  dwellings  of  the  simple  sort  of 
plebeian  folks  who  have  always  dwelt  in  Tooley  Street, 

185 


LONDON   FILMS 

and  who  so  largely  form  the  ancestry  of  the  American 
people.  No  grace  of  antiquity  remains  to  it,  but  there 
is  the  beauty  of  that  good-will  to  men  which  I  should 
be  glad  to  think  characteristic  of  our  nation  in  one  of 
the  Peabody  tenements  that  the  large-hearted  Amer 
ican  bequeathed  to  the  city  of  his  adoption  for  better 
homes  than  the  London  poor  could  otherwise  have 
known. 

Possibly  Baptists  and  Independents  like  those  whom 
Tooley  Street  sent  out  to  enlarge  the  area  of  free 
dom  beyond  seas  still  people  it;  but  I  cannot  say,  and 
for  the  rest  it  is  much  crossed  and  recrossed  by  the 
viaducts  of  the  London  and  South  Eastern  Railway, 
under  which  we  walked  the  length  of  the  long,  dull, 
noisy  thoroughfare.  We  were  going  to  the  church  of 
St.  Olave,  or  Olaus,  a  hallowed  Danish  king  from  whose 
name  that  of  Tooley  was  most  ingeniously  corrupted, 
for  the  sake  of  knowing  that  we  were  in  the  parish  that 
sweet  Priscilla  Mullins,  and  others  of  the  Plymouth 
colony  came  from.  The  church  is  an  uninteresting 
structure  of  Wrennish  renaissance;  but  it  was  better 
with  us  when,  for  the  sake  of  the  Puritan  ministers 
who  failed  to  repent  in  the  Clink  prison,  after  their 
silencing  by  Laud,  came  out  to  air  their  opinions  in  the 
boundlessness  of  our  continent.  My  friend  strongly 
believed  that  some  part  of  the  Clink  was  still  to  be  de 
tected  in  the  walls  of  certain  water-side  warehouses,  and 
we  plunged  into  their  labyrinth  after  leaving  St.  Olave's 
or  St.  Tooley's,  and  wandered  on  through  their  shades, 
among  trucks  and  carts  in  alleys  that  were  dirty  and 
damp,  but  somehow  whitened  with  flour  as  if  all  those 
dull  and  sullen  piles  were  grist-mills.  I  do  not  know 
whether  we  found  traces  of  the  Clink  or  not,  but  the 
place  had  a  not  ungrateful  human  interest  hi  certain 

186 


•g  £ 

5'      «! 


[ 


AMERICAN   ORIGINS— MOSTLY   NORTHERN 

floury  laborers  who  had  cleared  a  space  among  the 
wheels  and  hoofs,  and  in  the  hour  of  their  nooning  were 
pitching  pennies,  and  mildly  squabbling  over  the  events 
of  their  game.  We  somehow  came  out  at  Bankside, 
of  infamous  memory,  and  yet  of  glorious  memory,  for 
if  it  was  once  the  home  of  all  the  vices,  it  was  also  the 
home  of  one  of  the  greatest  arts.  The  present  filthy 
quay  figuratively  remembers  the  moral  squalor  of  its 
past  in  the  material  dirt  that  litters  it;  but  you  have 
to  help  it  recall  the  fact  that  here  stood  such  theatres 
as  the  Paris  Garden,  the  Rose,  the  Hope,  the  Swan,  and, 
above  all,  the  Globe. 

Here,  Shakespeare  rose  up  and  stood  massively 
blocking  the  perspective  of  our  patriotic  researches,  and 
blotting  out  all  minor  memories.  But  if  this  was  a 
hardship  it  was  one  which  constantly  waits  upon  the 
sympathetic  American  in  England.  It  is  really  easier 
to  stay  at  home,  and  make  your  inquiries  in  that  large 
air  where  the  objects  of  your  interest  are  placed  at 
ample  intervals,  than  to  visit  the  actual  scene  where 
you  will  find  them  crowding  and  elbowing  one  another, 
and  perhaps  treading  down  and  pushing  back  others 
of  equal  import  which  you  had  not  in  mind.  Eng 
land  has  so  long  been  breeding  greatness  of  all  kinds, 
and  her  visionary  children  press  so  thick  about  her 
knees,  that  you  cannot  well  single  one  specially  out 
when  you  come  close;  it  is  only  at  a  distance  that  you 
can  train  your  equatorial  upon  any  certain  star,  and 
study  it  at  your  ease.  This  tremendous  old  woman 
who  lives  in  a  shoe  so  many  sizes  too  small  more  than 
halves  with  her  guests  her  despair  in  the  multitude  of 
her  offspring,  and  it  is  best  to  visit  her  in  fancy  if  you 
wish  their  several  acquaintance.  There  at  Bankside 
was  not  only  Shakespeare  suddenly  filling  that  place 

187 


LONDON   FILMS 

and  extending  his  vast  shadow  over  the  region  we  had 
so  troublesomely  passed  through,  but  now  another  em 
barrassment  of  riches  attended  us.  We  were  going  to 
visit  St.  Saviour's  Church,  because  John  Harvard,  the 
son  of  a  butcher  in  that  parish  was  baptized  in  it,  long 
before  he  could  have  dreamed  of  Emanuel  College  at 
Cambridge,  or  its  outwandering  scholars  could  have 
dreamed  of  naming  after  him  another  college  in  another 
Cambridge  in  another  world.  Our  way  lay  through 
the  Borough  Market,  which  is  for  Southwark  in  fruits 
and  vegetables,  and  much  more  in  refuse  and  offal, 
what  Covent  Garden  Market  is  for  the  London  beyond 
Thames;  and  then  through  a  wide  troubled  street,  loud 
with  coming  and  going  at  some  railway  station.  Here 
we  suddenly  dropped  into  a  silent  and  secluded  place, 
and  found  ourselves  at  the  door  of  St.  Saviour's.  Out 
side  it  has  been  pitilessly  restored  in  a  later  English 
version  of  the  Early  English  in  which  it  was  built,  and 
it  has  that  peculiarly  offensive  hardness  which  such 
feats  of  masonry  seem  to  put  on  defiantly;  but  within 
much  of  the  original  architectural  beauty  lingers,  es 
pecially  in  the  choir  and  Lady  Chapel.  We  were  not 
there  for  that  beauty,  however,  but  for  John  Harvard's 
sake;  yet  no  sooner  were  we  fairly  inside  the  church 
than  our  thoughts  were  rapt  from  him  to  such  clearer 
fames  as  those  of  Philip  Massinger,  the  dramatist;  Ed 
mund  Shakespeare,  the  great  Shakespeare's  younger 
brother;  John  Fletcher,  of  the  poetic  firm  of  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher;  the  poet  Edward  Dyer;  and  yet  again 
the  poet  John  Gower,  the  "moral  Gower"  who  so  in 
sufficiently  filled  the  long  gap  between  Chaucer  and 
Spencer,  and  who  rests  here  with  a  monument  and  a 
painted  effigy  over  him.  Besides  these  there  are  so 
many  actors  buried  in  it  that  the  church  is  full  of  the 

188 


Copyright,  19Ui,  by  Alvin  Lanydun  Coburn 

LONDON    BRIDGE 


AMERICAN   ORIGINS— MOSTLY   NORTHERN 

theatre,  and  it  might  well  dispute  with  our  own  Little 
Church  Round  the  Corner,  the  honor  of  mothering  the 
outcast  of  other  sanctuaries;  though  it  rather  more 
welcomes  them  in  their  funeral  than  their  nuptial  rites. 
Among  the  tablets  and  effigies  there  was  none  of  John 
Harvard  in  St.  Saviour's,  and  we  were  almost  a  year 
too  early  for  the  painted  window  which  now  commem 
orates  him. 

One  might  leave  Southwark  rather  glad  to  be  out  of  it, 
for  in  spite  of  its  patriotic  and  poetic  associations  it  is  a 
quarter  where  the  scrupulous  house-keeping  of  London 
seems  for  once  to  fail.  In  such  streets  as  we  passed 
through,  and  I  dare  say  they  were  not  the  best,  the 
broom  and  the  brush  and  the  dust-pan  strive  in  vain 
against  the  dirt  that  seems  to  rise  out  of  the  ground 
and  fall  from  the  clouds.  But  many  people  live  there, 
and  London  Bridge,  by  which  we  crossed,  was  full  of 
clerks  and  shop-girls  going  home  to  Southwark;  for  it 
was  one  o'clock  on  a  Saturday,  and  they  were  profiting 
by  the  early  closing  which  shuts  the  stores  of  London 
so  inexorably  at  that  hour  on  that  day.  We  made  our 
way  through  them  to  the  parapet  for  a  final  look  at  that 
stretch  of  the  Thames  where  Cromwell  as  unwillingly 
as  unwittingly  perhaps  stepped  ashore  to  come  into  a 
kingdom.1 

1  While  the  reader  is  sharing  our  emotion  in  the  scene  of  the 
problematical  event,  I  think  it  a  good  time  to  tell  him  that  the 
knowledge  of  which  I  have  been  and  expect  to  be  so  profuse  in  these 
researches,  is  none  of  mine,  except  as  I  have  cheaply  possessed 
myself  of  it  from  the  wonderful  hand-book  of  Peter  Cunningham, 
which  Murray  used  to  publish  as  his  guide  to  London,  and  which 
unhappily  no  one  publishes  now.  It  is  a  bulky  volume  of  near 
six  hundred  pages,  crammed  with  facts  more  delightful  than  any 
fancies,  and  its  riches  were  supplemented  for  me  by  the  specific 
erudition  of  my  friend,  the  genealogist,  Mr.  Lothrop  Withington, 
who  accompanied  my  wanderings,  and  who  endorses  all  my  state- 

189 


LONDON    FILMS 

We  were  going  from  St.  Saviour's  in  Southwark  where 
Harvard  was  baptized  to  St.  Catherine  Cree  in  the  city 
where  Sir  Nicholas  Throgmor ton's  effigy  lies  in  the 
chancel,  and  somewhat  distantly  relates  itself  to  our  his 
tory  through  his  daughter's  elopement  with  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh.  But  now  for  a  mere  pleasure,  whose  wanton 
ness  I  shall  not  know  how  to  excuse  to  the  duteous 
reader,  we  turned  aside  to  the  church  of  St.  Magnus  at 
the  end  of  the  bridge,  and  I  shall  always  rejoice  that  we 
did  so,  for  there  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  three  of 
the  most  admirable  cats  in  London.  One  curled  herself 
round  the  base  of  a  pillar  of  the  portico,  which  was 
formerly  the  public  thoroughfare  to  London  Bridge; 
another  basked  in  the  pretty  garden  which  now  encloses 
the  portico,  and  let  the  shifting  shadows  of  the  young 
sycamores  flicker  over  her  velvet  flank ;  the  third  arched 
a  majestic  back  and  rubbed  against  our  legs  in  accom 
panying  us  into  the  church.  There  was  not  much  for  us 
to  see  there,  and  perhaps  the  cat  was  tired  of  knowing 
that  the  church  was  built  by  Wren,  after  the  great  fire, 
and  has  a  cupola  and  lantern  thought  to  be  uncommonly 
fine.  Certainly  it  did  not  seem  to  share  my  interest  in 
the  tablet  to  Miles  Coverdale,  once  rector  of  St.  Magnus 
and  bishop  of  Exeter,  at  which  I  started,  not  so  much 
because  he  had  directed  the  publication  of  the  first 
complete  version  of  the  English  Bible,  as  because  he 
had  borne  the  name  of  a  chief  character  in  The  Blithedale 
Romance.  I  am  afraid  that  if  the  cat  could  have  sup 
posed  me  to  be  occupied  with  such  a  trivial  matter  it 
would  not  have  purred  so  civilly  at  parting,  and  I 
should  not  have  known  how  to  justify  myself  by  ex- 

ments.  The  reader  who  doubts  them  (as  I  sometimes  do)  may  recur 
to  him  at  the  British  Museum  with  the  proper  reproaches  if  they 
prove  mistaken. 

190 


1 


THE    ANCIENT   CHURCH   OF   ST.    MAGNUS 
(From  an  old  print) 


AMERICAN    ORIGINS— MOSTLY    NORTHERN 

plaining  that  the  church  of  St.  Magnus  was  more  illus 
triously  connected  with  America  through  that  coinci 
dence  than  many  more  historical  scenes. 

The  early  closing  had  already  prevailed  so  largely  in 
the  city,  that  most  of  the  churches  were  shut,  and  we 
were  not  aware  of  having  got  into  St.  Catherine  Cree's 
at  the  time  we  actually  did  so.  We  were  grateful  for 
getting  into  any  church,  but  we  looked  about  us  too 
carelessly  to  identify  the  effigy  of  Sir  Nicholas,  who 
was,  after  all,  only  a  sort  of  involuntary  father-in-law 
of  Virginia.  That  was  what  we  said  to  console  our 
selves  afterwards ;  but  now,  since  we  were,  however  un 
wittingly,  there,  I  feel  that  I  have  some  right  to  remind 
the  reader  that  our  enemy  (so  far  as  we  are  of  Puritan 
descent)  Archbishop  Laud  consecrated  the  church  with 
ceremonies  of  such  high  ecclesiastical  character  that 
his  part  in  them  was  alleged  against  him,  and  did  some 
thing  to  bring  him  to  the  block.  That  Inigo  Jones  is 
said  to  have  helped  in  designing  the  church,  and  that 
the  great  Holbein  is  believed  to  be  buried  in  it,  and 
would  have  had  a  monument  there  if  the  Earl  of  Arun- 
del  could  have  found  his  bones  to  put  it  over,  are  suffi 
ciently  irrelevant  details. 

The  reader  sees  how  honest  I  am  trying  to  be  with 
him,  and  I  will  not  conceal  from  him  that  Duke  Street, 
down  a  stretch  of  which  I  looked,  because  the  wife  of 
Elder  Brewster  of  Plymouth  Colony  was  born  and  bred 
there,  was  as  dull  a  perspective  of  mean  modern  houses 
as  any  in  London.  It  was  distinctly  a  relief,  after  pay 
ing  this  duty,  to  pass,  in  Leadenhall  Street,  the  stately 
bulk  of  India  House,  and  think  of  the  former  occupying 
the  site,  from  which  Charles  Lamb  used  to  go  early  in 
compensation  for  coming  so  late  to  his  work  there.  It 
was  still  better  when,  by  an  accident  happier  than  that 

191 


LONDON    FILMS 
i 

which  befell  us  at  St.  Catherine  Cree's,  we  unexpectedly 
entered  by  a  quaint  nook  from  Bishopsgate  Street  to  the 
church  of  St.  Ethelburga,  which  has  a  claim  to  the  New- 
Yorker's  interest  from  the  picturesque  fact  that  Henry 
Hudson  and  his  ship's  company  made  their  communion 
in  it  the  night  before  he  sailed  away  to  give  his  name  to 
the  lordliest,  if  not  the  longest  of  our  rivers,  and  to  help 
the  Dutch  found  the  Tammany  regime,  which  still 
flourishes  at  the  Hudson's  mouth.  The  comprehensive 
Cunningham  makes  no  mention  of  the  fact,  but  I  do  not 
know  why  my  genealogist  should  have  had  the  mis 
giving  which  he  expressed  within  the  overhearing  of 
the  eager  pew-opener  attending  us.  She  promptly  set 
him  right.  "  Oh,  'e  did  mike  it  'ere,  sir.  They've  been 
and  searched  the  records,"  she  said,  so  that  the  reader 
now  has  it  on  the  best  authority. 

I  wish  I  could  share  with  him,  as  easily  as  this  assur 
ance,  the  sentiment  of  the  quaint  place,  with  its  traces 
of  Early  English  architecture,  and  its  look  of  being 
chopped  in  two;  its  intense  quiet  and  remoteness  in  the 
heart  of  the  city,  with  the  slop-pail  of  its  pew-opener 
mingling  a  cleansing  odor  with  the  ancient  smells  which 
pervade  all  old  churches.  But  these  things  are  of  the 
nerves  and  may  not  be  imparted,  though  they  may  be 
intimated.  As  rich  in  its  way  as  the  sentiment  of  St. 
Ethelburga  was  that  of  the  quiescing  streets  of  the  city, 
that  pleasant  afternoon,  with  their  shops  closed  or  clos 
ing,  and  the  crowds  thinned  or  thinning  in  their  foot 
ways  and  wheelways,  so  that  we  got  from  point  to  point 
in  our  desultory  progress,  incommoded  only  by  other 
associations  that  rivalled  those  we  had  more  specifically 
in  mind.  History,  of  people  and  of  princes,  finance, 
literature,  the  arts  of  every  kind,  were  the  phantoms 
that  started  up  from  the  stones  and  the  blocks  of  the 

192 


AMERICAN   ORIGINS— MOSTLY   NORTHERN 

wood-pavement  and  followed  or  fled  before  us  at  every 
step.  As  I  have  already  tried  to  express,  it  is  always 
the  same  story.  London  is  too  full  of  interest,  and 
when  I  thought  how  I  could  have  gone  over  as  much 
ground  in  New  York  without  anything  to  distract  me 
from  what  I  had  in  view,  I  felt  the  pressure  of  those 
thick  London  facts  almost  to  suffocation.  Nothing 
but  my  denser  ignorance  saved  me  from  their  density, 
as  I  hurried  with  my  friend  through  air  that  any  igno 
rance  less  dense  would  have  found  impassable  with 
memories. 

As  it  was  I  could  draw  a  full  breath  unmolested  only 
when  we  dropped  down  a  narrow  way  from  Bishopsgate 
Street  to  the  sequestered  place  before  the  church  of  the 
Dutch  refugees  from  papal  persecutions  in  France  and 
the  Netherlands.  Here  was  formerly  the  church  of  the 
Augustine  Friars,  whose  community  Henry  VIII.  dis 
solved,  and  whose  church  his  son  Edward  VI.  gave  to 
the  "Germans"  as  he  calls  the  Hollanders  in  his  boyish 
diary.  It  was  to  our  purpose  as  one  of  the  beginnings 
of  New  York,  for  it  is  said  that  New  Amsterdam  was 
first  imagined  by  the  exiles  who  worshipped  in  it,  and 
who  planned  the  expedition  of  Henry  Hudson  from  it. 
Besides  this  historic  or  mythic  claim,  it  had  for  me  the 
more  strictly  human  interest  of  the  sign-board  in  Dutch, 
renewed  from  the  earliest  time,  at  both  its  doorways, 
notifying  its  expatriated  congregation  that  all  letters 
and  parcels  would  be  received  there  for  them ;  this  some 
how  intimated  that  the  refugees  could  not  have  found 
it  spiritually  much  farther  to  extend  their  exile  half 
round  the  world.  Cunningham  says  that  "the  church 
contains  some  very  good  decorated  windows,  and  will 
repay  examination,"  but,  like  the  early  -  closing  shops 
all  round  it,  the  Dutch  church  was  shut  that  Saturday 

193 


LONDON    FILMS 

afternoon,  and  we  had  to  come  away  contenting  our 
selves  as  we  could  with  the  Gothic,  fair  if  rather  too 
freshly  restored,  of  the  outside.  I  can  therefore  impar 
tially  commend  the  exterior  to  our  Knickerbocker 
travellers,  but  they  will  readily  find  the  church  in  the 
rear  of  the  Bank  of  England,  after  cashing  their  drafts 
there,  and  judge  for  themselves. 

Philadelphians  of  Quaker  descent  will  like  better  to 
follow  my  friend  with  me  up  Cheapside,  past  the  Bow- 
bells  which  ring  so  sweet  and  clear  in  literature,  and 
through  Holborn  to  Newgate  which  was  one  of  the  sev 
eral  prisons  of  William  Penn.  He  did  not  go  to  it  with 
out  making  it  so  hard  for  the  magistrates  trying  him  and 
his  fellow-Quakers  for  street-preaching  that  they  were 
forced  to  over-ride  his  law  and  logic,  and  send  him  to 
jail  in  spite  of  the  jury's  verdict  of  acquittal;  such 
things  could  then  be  easily  done.  In  self-justification 
they  committed  the  jury  along  with  the  prisoners;  that 
made  a  very  perfect  case  for  their  worships,  as  the 
reader  can  find  edifyingly  and  a  little  amusingly  set  forth 
in  Maria  Webb's  story  of  The  Penns  and  the  Penningtons. 
As  is  known,  the  persecution  of  Penn  wellnigh  con 
verted  his  father,  the  stiff  old  admiral,  who  now  wrote 
to  him  in  Newgate:  "Son  William,  if  you  and  your 
friends  keep  to  your  plain  way  of  preaching,  and  your 
plain  way  of  living,  you  will  make  an  end  of  the  priests 
to  the  end  of  the  world.  .  .  .  Live  in  love.  Shun  all 
manner  of  evil,  and  I  pray  God  to  bless  you  all;  and  He 
will  bless  you." 

Little  of  the  old  Newgate  where  Penn  lay  imprisoned 
is  left;  a  spic-and-span  new  Newgate,  still  in  process  of 
building,  replaces  it,  but  there  is  enough  left  for  a  monu 
ment  to  him  who  was  brave  in  such  a  different  way  from 
his  brave  father,  and  was  great  far  beyond  the  worldly 

194 


2  H 

3  a 

s  n 


—      JO 

H 


AMERICAN    ORIGINS— MOSTLY   NORTHERN 

greatness  which  the  admiral  hoped  his  comely,  courtly 
son  would  achieve.  It  was  in  Newgate,  when  he  was 
cast  there  the  second  time  in  three  months,  that  he 
wrote  The  Great  Case  of  Liberty  of  Conscience,  and  three 
minor  treatises.  He  addressed  from  the  same  prison  a 
letter  to  Parliament  explaining  the  principles  of  Quaker 
ism,  and  he  protested  to  the  sheriff  of  London  against 
the  cruelties  practised  by  the  jailors  of  Newgate  on 
prisoners  too  poor  to  buy  their  favor.  He  who  was  rich 
and  well-born  preferred  to  suffer  with  these  humble 
victims;  and  probably  his  oppressors  were  as  glad  to  be 
rid  of  him  in  the  end  as  he  of  them. 

One  may  follow  Penn  (though  we  did  not  always  fol 
low  him  to  all,  that  Saturday  afternoon),  to  many  other 
places  in  London:  to  the  Tower,  where  he  was  impris 
oned  on  the  droll  charge  of  "blasphemy,"  within  stone's 
throw  of  All  Hallow's  Barking,  where  he  was  christened; 
to  Grace  Church  Street,  where  he  was  arrested  for  preach 
ing;  to  Lincoln's  Inn,  where  he  had  chambers  in  his 
worldlier  days;  to  Tower  Street,  where  he  went  to 
school ;  to  the  Fleet,  where  he  once  lived  within  the 
"rules"  of  the  prison;  to  Norfolk  Street,  where  he  dwelt 
awhile  almost  in  hiding  from  the  creditors  who  were 
pressing  him,  probably  for  the  public  debt  of  Pennsyl 
vania. 

We  followed  him  only  to  Newgate,  whence  we  visited 
the  church  of  St.  Sepulchre  hard  by,  and  vainly  at 
tempted  to  enter,  because  Roger  Williams  was  christ 
ened  there,  and  so  connected  it  with  the  coming  of  tol 
eration  into  the  world,  as  well  as  with  the  history  of  the 
minute  province  of  Rhode  Island,  which  his  spirit  so 
boundlessly  enlarged.  We  failed  equally  of  any  satis 
factory  effect  from  Little  St.  Helen's,  Bishopsgate, 
possibly  because  the  Place  was  demolished  a  hundred 

195 


LONDON   FILMS 

and  five  years  before,  and  because  my  friend  could  not 
quite  make  out  which  neighboring  street  it  was  where  the 
mother  of  the  Wesleys  was  born.  But  we  did  what 
we  could  with  the  shield  of  the  United  States  Consulate- 
General  in  the  Place,  and  in  an  adjoining  court  we  had 
occasion  for  seriousness  in  the  capers  of  a  tipsy  French 
man,  who  had  found  some  boys  playing  at  soldiers,  and 
was  teaching  them  in  his  own  tongue  from  apparently 
vague  recollections  of  the  manual  of  arms.  I  do  not 
insist  that  we  profited  by  the  occasion;  I  only  say  that 
life  likes  a  motley  wear,  and  that  he  who  rejects  the 
antic  aspects  it  so  often  inappropriately  puts  on  is  no 
true  photographer. 

After  all,  we  did  not  find  just  the  street,  much  less 
the  house,  in  which  Susannah  Annesley  had  lived  before 
she  was  Mrs.  Wesley,  and  long  before  her  sons  had 
imagined  Methodism,  and  the  greater  of  them  had 
borne  its  message  to  General  Oglethorpe's  new  colony 
of  Georgia.  She  lies  in  Bunhill  Fields  near  Finsbury 
Square,  that  place  sacred  to  so  many  varying  mem 
ories,  but  chiefly  those  of  the  Dissenters  who  leased  it, 
because  they  would  not  have  the  service  from  the  book 
of  Common  Prayer  read  over  them.  There  her  dust 
mingles  with  that  of  John  Bunyan,  of  Daniel  de  Foe, 
of  Isaac  Watts,  of  William  Blake,  of  Thomas  Stothard, 
and  a  multitude  of  nameless  or  of  most  namable  others. 
The  English  crowd  one  another  no  less  under  than 
above  the  ground,  and  their  island  is  as  historically  as 
actually  over-populated.  As  I  have  expressed  before, 
you  can  scarcely  venture  into  the  past  anywhere  for  a 
certain  association  without  being  importuned  by  a 
score  of  others  as  interesting  or  more  so.  I  have,  for 
instance,  been  hesitating  to  say  that  the  ancestor  of 
Susannah  was  the  Reverend  Samuel  Annesley  who 

196 


By  courtesy  of  London  Stereoscopic  and  Photograph  Company 

BOW-BELLS    (ST.    MARY-LE-BOW,    CHEAPSIDE) 


AMERICAN    ORIGINS— MOSTLY    NORTHERN 

was  silenced  for  his  Puritanism  in  his  church  of  St. 
Giles  Cripplegate,  because  I  should  have  to  confess  that 
when  I  visited  his  church  my  thoughts  were  rapt  from 
the  Reverend  Samuel  and  from  Susannah  Annesley, 
and  John  Wesley,  and  the  Georgian  Methodists  to  the 
far  mightier  fame  of  Milton,  who  lies  interred  there, 
with  his  father  before  him,  with  John  Fox,  author  of 
The  Book  of  Martyrs,  with  Sir  Martin  Frobisher,  who 
sailed  the  western  seas  when  they  were  yet  mysteries, 
with  Margaret  Lucy,  the  daughter  of  Shakespeare's  Sir 
Thomas.  There,  too,  Cromwell  was  married,  when  a 
youth  of  twenty-one,  to  Elizabeth  Bowchier.  Again, 
I  have  had  to  ask  myself,  what  is  the  use  of  painfully 
following  up  the  slender  threads  afterwards  woven  into 
the  web  of  American  nationality,  when  at  any  moment 
the  clews  may  drop  from  your  heedless  hands  in  your 
wonder  at  some  which  are  the  woof  of  the  history  of  the 
world?  I  have  to  own  even  here  that  the  more  storied 
dead  in  Bunhill  Fields  made  me  forget  that  there  lay 
among  them  Nathaniel  Mather  of  the  kindred  of  In 
crease  and  Cotton. 

That  is  a  place  which  one  must  wish  to  visit  not  once, 
but  often,  and  I  hope  that  if  I  send  any  reader  of  mine 
to  it  he  will  fare  better  than  we  did,  and  not  find  it  shut 
to  the  public  on  a  Sunday  morning  when  it  ought  to 
have  been  open.  But  the  Sabbatarian  observances  of 
England  are  quite  past  the  comprehension  of  even  such 
semi-aliens  as  the  Americans,  and  must  baffle  entire 
foreigners  all  but  to  madness.  I  had  already  seen  the 
Sunday  auctions  of  the  poor  Jews  in  Petticoat  Lane, 
which  are  licit,  if  not  legal,  and  that  Sunday  morning 
before  we  found  Bunhill  Fields  fast  closed,  we  had  found 
a  market  for  poor  Christians  wide  open  in  Whitecross 
Street  near  by.  It  was  one  of  several  markets  of  the 

197 


LONDON    FILMS 

kind  which  begin  early  Saturday  evening,  and  are 
suffered  by  a  much-winking  police  to  carry  on  their 
traffic  through  the  night  and  till  noon  the  next  day. 
Then,  at  the  hour  when  the  Continental  Sunday  changes 
from  a  holy  day  to  a  holiday,  the  guardians  of  the  public 
morals  in  London  begin  to  urge  the  hucksters  and  their 
customers  to  have  done  with  their  bargaining,  and  get 
about  remembering  the  Sabbath-day.  If  neither  per 
suasions  nor  imperatives  will  prevail,  it  is  said  that  the 
police  sometimes  call  in  the  firemen  and  rake  the  market 
place  with  volleys  from  the  engine-hose.  This  is  doubt 
less  effective,  but  at  the  hour  when  we  passed  through 
as  much  of  Whitecross  Street  as  eyes  and  nose  could 
bear,  it  was  still  far  from  the  time  for  such  an  extreme 
measure,  and  the  market  was  flourishing  as  if  it  were 
there  to  stay  indefinitely. 

Everything  immediately  imaginable  for  the  outside 
or  inside  of  man  seemed  on  sale:  clothing  of  all  kinds, 
boots  and  shoes,  hats  and  caps,  glassware,  iron- ware; 
fruits  and  vegetables,  heaps  of  unripe  English  hazel- 
nuts,  and  heaps  of  Spanish  grapes  which  had  failed  to 
ripen  on  the  way;  fish,  salt  and  fresh,  and  equally 
smelling  to  heaven;  but,  above  all,  flesh  meats  of  every 
beast  of  the  field  and  every  bird  of  the  barn-yard, 
with  great  girls  hewing  and  hacking  at  the  carnage,  and 
strewing  the  ground  under  their  stands  with  hoofs  and 
hides  and  claws  and  feathers  and  other  less  namable 
refuse.  There  was  a  notable  absence  among  the  huck 
sters  of  that  coster  class  which  I  used  to  see  in  London 
twenty  odd  years  before,  or  at  least  an  absence  of  the 
swarming  buttons  on  jackets  and  trousers  which  used 
to  distinguish  the  coster.  But  among  the  customers, 
whose  number  all  but  forbade  our  passage  through  the 
street,  with  the  noise  of  their  feet  and  voices,  there 

198 


AMERICAN   ORIGINS— MOSTLY   NORTHERN 

were,  far  beyond  counting,  those  short,  stubbed  girls 
and  women  as  typically  cockney  still  as  the  costers  ever 
were.  They  were  of  a  plinth-like  bigness  up  and  down, 
and  their  kind,  plain,  common  faces  were  all  topped 
with  narrow  -  brimmed  sailor-hats,  mostly  black.  In 
their  jargoning  hardly  an  aspirate  was  in  its  right  place, 
but  they  looked  as  if  their  hearts  were,  and  if  no  word 
came  from  their  lips  with  its  true  quality,  but  with  that 
curious  soft  London  slur  or  twist,  they  doubtless  spoke 
a  sound  business  dialect. 

When  we  traversed  the  dense  body  of  the  market  and 
entered  Roscoe  Street  from  Whitecross,  we  were  sur 
prisingly  soon  out  of  its  hubbub  in  a  quiet  befitting 
the  silent  sectaries,  who  once  made  so  great  a  spiritual 
clamor  in  the  world.  We  were  going  to  look  at  the  grave 
of  George  Fox,  because  of  his  relation  to  our  colonial 
history  in  Pennsylvania  and  Rhode  Island,  and  we 
thought  it  well  to  look  into  the  Friends'  Meeting-house 
on  the  way,  for  a  more  fitting  frame  of  mind  than  we 
might  have  brought  with  us  from  Whitecross  Street. 
A  mute  sexton  welcomed  us  at  the  door,  and  held  back 
for  us  the  curtain  of  the  homely  quadrangular  interior, 
where  we  found  twoscore  or  more  of  such  simple  folk 
as  Fox  might  have  preached  to  in  just  such  a  place. 
The  only  difference  was  that  they  now  wore  artless 
versions  of  the  world's  present  fashions  in  dress,  and  not 
the  drabs  of  out-dated  cut  which  we  associate  with 
Quakerism.  But  this  was  right,  for  that  dress  is  only 
the  antiquated  simplicity  of  the  time  when  Quakerism 
began ;  and  the  people  we  now  saw  were  more  fitly  dressed 
than  if  they  had  worn  it.  We  sat  with  them  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  in  the  stillness  which  no  one  broke,  the  elders 
on  the  platform,  with  their  brows  bowed  on  their  hands, 
apparently  more  deeply  lost  in  it  than  the  rest.  Then 

14  199 


LONDON   FILMS 

we  had  freedom  (to  use  their  gentle  Quaker  parlance) 
to  depart,  and  I  hope  we  did  so  without  offence. 

Cunningham  says  that  Fox  was  buried  in  Bunhill 
Fields,  but  he  owns  there  is  no  memorial  of  him  there; 
and  there  is  a  stone  to  mark  his  grave  in  the  grassy 
space  just  beyond  the  meeting-house  in  Roscoe  Street. 
If  that  is  really  his  last  resting-place,  he  lies  under  the 
shadow  of  a  certain  lofty  warehouse  walls,  and  in  the 
shelter  of  some  trees  which  on  that  sunny  First  Day 
morning  stirred  in  the  breeze  with  the  stiffness  by 
which  the  English  foliage  confesses  before  the  fall  it 
drops  sere  and  colorless  to  the  ground.  Some  leaves 
had  already  fallen  about  the  simple  monumental  stone, 
and  now  they  moved  inertly,  and  now  again  lay  still. 

I  will  own  here  that  I  had  more  heart  in  the  researches 
which  concerned  the  ancestral  Friends  of  all  mankind, 
including  so  much  American  citizenship,  than  in  follow 
ing  up  some  other  origins  of  ours.  The  reader  will  per 
haps  have  noticed  long  before  that  our  origins  were 
nearly  all  religious,  and  that  though  some  of  the  Amer 
ican  plantations  were  at  first  the  effect  of  commercial 
enterprise,  they  were  afterwards  by  far  the  greater 
part  undertaken  by  people  who  desired  for  themselves, 
if  not  for  others,  freedom  for  the  forms  of  worship  for 
bidden  them  at  home.  Our  colonial  beginnings  were 
illustrated  by  sacrifices  and  martyrdoms  even  among 
the  lowliest,  and  their  leaders  passed  in  sad  vicissitude 
from  pulpit  to  prison,  back  and  forth,  until  exile  became 
their  refuge  from  oppression.  No  nation  could  have  a 
nobler  source  than  ours  had  in  such  heroic  fidelity  to 
ideals;  but  it  cannot  be  forgotten  that  the  religious 
freedom,  which  they  all  sought,  some  of  them  were  not 
willing  to  impart  when  they  had  found  it;  and  it  is 
known  how,  in  New  England  especially,  they  practised 

200 


AMERICAN   ORIGINS— MOSTLY   NORTHERN 

the  lessons  of  persecution  they  had  learned  in  Old  Eng 
land.  Two  provinces  stood  conspicuously  for  toleration, 
Rhode  Island,  for  which  Roger  Williams  imagined  it 
the  first  time  in  history,  and  Pennsylvania,  where,  for 
the  first  time,  William  Penn  embodied  in  the  polity  of 
a  state  the  gospel  of  peace  and  good-will  to  men.  Neither 
of  these  colonies  has  become  the  most  exemplary  of  our 
commonwealths;  both  are  perhaps,  for  some  reasons, 
the  least  so  in  their  sections;  but,  above  all  the  rest, 
their  earlier  memories  appeal  to  the  believer  in  the 
universal  right  to  religious  liberty  and  hi  the  ideal  of 
peaceful  democracy  which  the  Quakers  alone  have 
realized.  The  Quakers  are  no  longer  sensibly  a  moral 
force;  but  the  creed  of  honest  work  for  daily  bread,  and 
of  the  equalization  of  every  man  with  another  which 
they  lived,  can  never  perish.  Their  testimony  against 
bloodshed  was  practical,  as  such  a  testimony  can  still 
be,  when  men  will ;  their  principle  of  equality,  as  well  as 
their  practise  of  it  was  their  legacy  to  our  people,  and 
it  remains  now  all  that  differences  us  from  other  na 
tions.  It  was  not  Thomas  Jefferson  who  first  imagined 
the  first  of  the  self-evident  truths  of  the  Declaration, 
but  George  Fox. 

We  went,  inappropriately  enough,  from  where  George 
Fox  lay  in  his  grave,  level  with  the  common  earth,  to 
where,  in  Finsbury  Pavement,  the  castellated  armory 
of  the  Honourable  Artillery  Company  of  London  recalls 
the  origin  of  the  like  formidable  body  in  Boston.  These 
gallant  men  were  archers  before  they  were  gunners, 
being  established  in  that  quality  first  when  the  fear  of 
Spanish  invasion  was  rife  in  1585.  They  did  yeoman 
service  against  their  own  king  in  the  Civil  War,  but 
later  fell  into  despite  and  were  mocked  by  poets  no  more 
warlike  than  themselves.  Fletcher's  "Knight  of  the 

201 


LONDON   FILMS 

Burning  Pestle"  was  of  their  company,  and  Cowper's 
"  John  Gilpin  "  was  "  a  train-band  captain."  Now,  how 
ever,  they  are  so  far  restored  to  their  earlier  standing 
that  when  they  are  called  out  to  celebrate,  say,  the 
Fourth  of  July,  or  on  any  of  the  high  military  occasions 
demanding  the  presence  of  royalty,  the  King  appears 
in  their  uniform. 


XVIII 

V 

AMERICAN   ORIGINS— MOSTLY   SOUTHERN 

OUTSIDE  the  high  gate  of  Bunhill  Fields,  we  could 
do  no  more  than  read  the  great  names  lettered 
on  the  gate-posts,  and  peer  through  the  iron  barriers 
at  the  thickly  clustered  headstones  within.  But  over 
against  the  cemetery  we  had  access  to  the  chapel  where 
John  Wesley  preached  for  thirty  years,  and  behind  which 
he  is  buried.  He  laid  the  corner-stone  in  1777  amid 
such  a  multitude  of  spectators  that  he  could  scarcely 
get  through  to  the  foundation,  Cunningham  says. 
Before  the  chapel  is  an  excellent  statue  of  the  great 
preacher,  and  the  glance  at  the  interior  which  we  suf 
fered  ourselves  showed  a  large  congregation  listening 
to  the  doctrine  which  he  preached  there  so  long,  and 
which  he  carried  beyond  seas  himself  to  ourselves,  to 
found  among  us  the  great  spiritual  commonwealth 
which  is  still  more  populous  than  any  of  those  dividing 
our  country. 

The  scene  of  his  labors  here  was  related  for  me  by 
an  obscure  association  to  such  a  doctrinally  different 
place  as  Finsbury  Chapel,  hard  by,  where  my  old  friend, 
Dr.  Moncure  D.  Conway  preached  for  twenty  years. 
Whatever  manner  of  metaphysician  he  has  ended,  he 
began  Methodist,  and  as  a  Virginian  he  had  a  right  to  a 
share  of  my  interest  in  that  home  of  Wesleyism,  for  it 
was  in  Virginia,  so  much  vaster  then  than  now,  that 

203 


LONDON    FILMS 

Wesleyism  spread  widest  and  deepest.  If  any  part  of 
Wesley's  mission  tended  to  modify  or  abolish  slavery, 
then  a  devotion  to  freedom  so  constant  and  generous  as 
Conway's  should  link  their  names  by  an  irrefragable, 
however  subtle,  filament  of  common  piety.  I  wished 
to  look  into  Finsbury  Chapel  for  my  old  friend's  sake, 
but  it  seemed  to  me  that  we  had  intruded  on  worship 
pers  enough  that  morning,  and  I  satisfied  my  longing 
by  a  glimpse  of  the  interior  through  the  pane  of  glass 
let  into  the  inner  door.  It  was  past  the  time  for  sing 
ing  the  poem  of  Tennyson  which  "Tom  Brown"  Hughes 
used  to  say  they  always  gave  out  instead  of  a  hymn 
in  Finsbury  Chapel;  and  some  one  else  was  preaching 
in  Conway's  pulpit,  or  at  his  desk.  I  do  not  know 
what  weird  influence  of  sermonizing  seen  but  not  heard 
took  the  sense  of  reality  from  the  experience,  but  I 
came  away  feeling  as  if  I  had  looked  upon  something 
visionary. 

It  was  no  bad  preparation  for  coming  presently  to 
the  church  of  All  Hallows  in  the  Wall,  where  a  bit  of  the 
old  Roman  masonry  shows  in  the  foundations  of  the 
later  defences,  of  which  indeed,  no  much  greater  length 
remains.  The  church,  which  is  so  uninterestingly  ugly  as 
not  to  compete  with  the  relic  of  Roman  wall,  stands  at 
the  base  of  a  little  triangle  planted  with  young  elms 
that  made  a  green  quiet,  and  murmured  to  the  silence 
with  their  stiffening  leaves.  It  was  an  effect  possible 
only  to  that  wonderful  London  which  towers  so  massive 
ly  into  the  present  that  you  are  dumb  before  the  evi 
dences  of  its  vast  antiquity.  There  must  have  been  a 
time  when  there  was  no  London,  but  you  cannot  think 
it  any  more  than  you  can  think  the  time  when  there 
shall  be  none.  I  make  so  sure  of  these  reflections  that 
I  hope  there  was  no  mistake  about  those  modest  breadths 

204 


AMERICAN   ORIGINS— MOSTLY   SOUTHERN 

of  Roman  masonry;   its  rubble  laid  in  concrete,  was 
strong  enough  to  support  the  weightiest  consideration. 

I  am  the  more  anxious  about  this  because  my  friend, 
the  genealogist,  here  differed  with  the  great  Cunning 
ham,  and  was  leading  me  by  that  morsel  of  Roman 
London  to  St.  Peter's  Lane,  where  he  said  Fox  died, 
and  not  to  White  Hart  Court,  where  my  other  authority 
declares  that  he  made  an  end  two  days  after  preaching 
in  the  Friends'  Meeting-house  there.  The  ignorant  dis 
ciple  of  both  may  have  his  choice ;  perhaps  in  the  proc 
ess  of  time  the  two  places  may  have  become  one  and 
the  same.  At  any  rate  we  were  able  that  morning  to 
repair  our  error  concerning  St.  Catherine  Cree's,  which 
we  had  unwittingly  seen  before,  and  now  consciously 
saw,  for  Sir  Nicholas  Throgmorton's  sake.  It  had  the 
look  of  very  high  church  in  the  service  which  was  cele 
brating,  and  I  am  afraid  my  mind  was  taken  less  by  the 
monument  of  Sir  Nicholas  than  by  the  black-robed 
figure  of  the  young  man  who  knelt  with  bowed  head  at 
the  back  of  the  church  and  rapt  me  with  the  memory 
of  the  many  sacerdotal  shapes  which  I  used  to  see  do 
ing  the  like  in  Latin  sanctuaries.  It  is  one  of  the  few 
advantages  of  living  long  that  all  experiences  become 
more  or  less  contemporaneous,  and  that  at  certain 
moments  you  cannot  be  distinctly  aware  just  when 
and  where  you  are. 

There  was  little  of  this  mystical  question  when  our 
mission  took  us  to  Whitechapel,  for  there  was  nothing 
there  to  suggest  former  times  or  other  places.  I  did, 
indeed,  recall  the  thick  -  breathed  sweltering  Sunday 
morning  when  I  had  visited  the  region  in  July;  but  it 
is  all  now  so  absolutely  and  sordidly  modern  that  one 
has  no  difficulty  in  believing  that  it  was  altogether  dif 
ferent  when  so  many  Southern  and  especially  Virginian 

205 


LONDON    FILMS 

emigrations  began  there.  How  many  settlers  in  New 
Jersey,  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  and  Maryland  also 
were  recruited  from  it,  I  know  not;  but  the  reader  may 
have  it  at  second-hand  from  me,  as  I  had  it  at  first 
hand  from  my  genealogist,  that  some  Virginian  names 
of  the  first  quality  originated  in  Whitechapel,  which,  in 
the  colonizing  times,  was  a  region  of  high  respectability, 
and  not  for  generations  afterwards  the  perlieu  it  became, 
and  has  now  again  somewhat  ceased  to  be. 

The  first  exiles  from  it  were  not  self-banished  for 
conscience'  sake,  like  those  at  a  later  date  when  the 
Puritans  went  both  to  Massachusetts  where  they  re 
volted  further,  and  to  Virginia  where  they  ultimately 
conformed.  The  earlier  out-goers,  though  they  might 
be  come-outers,  were  part  of  the  commercial  enterprise 
which  began  to  plant  colonies  north  and  south.  The 
Plymouth  Company  which  had  the  right  to  the  country 
as  far  northward  as  Nova  Scotia  and  westward  as  far 
as  the  Pacific,  and  the  London  Company  which  had  as 
great  scope  westward  and  southward  as  far  as  Cape 
Fear,  had  the  region  between  them  in  common,  and  they 
both  drew  upon  Whitechapel,  and  upon  Stepney  be 
yond,  where  I  had  formerly  fancied  the  present  White 
chapel  resuming  somewhat  of  its  ancient  respectability. 
It  is  then  a  "spacious  fair  street,"  as  one  of  Cunning 
ham's  early  authorities  describes  it,  and  it  is  still  "  some 
what  long,"  so  long  indeed  that  our  tram  was  a  half- 
hour  in  carrying  us  through  it  into  Stepney.  About 
the  time  of  the  emigrations  De  Foe  saw  it,  or  says  he 
saw  it  (you  never  can  be  sure  with  De  Foe)  thronged 
"with  the  richer  sort  of  people,  especially  the  nobility 
and  gentry  from  the  west  part  of  the  town,  .  .  .  with 
their  families  and  servants,"  escaping  into  the  country 

from  the  plague. 

206 


AMERICAN   ORIGINS— MOSTLY   SOUTHERN 

The  "offscourings"  of  London,  which  the  companies 
carried  rather  more  to  the  southward  than  the  north 
ward  with  us,  were  hardly  scoured  off  in  Whitechapel, 
which  was  a  decent  enough  ancestral  source  for  any 
American  strain.  As  for  Stepney,  then  as  now  the 
great  centre  of  the  London  shipping,  she  has  never 
shared  the  ill-repute  of  Whitechapel,  at  least  in  name. 
Cunningham  declares  the  region  once  "well-inhabited," 
and  the  sailors  still  believe  that  all  children  born  at  sea 
belong  to  Stepney  Parish.  By  an  easy  extension  of 
this  superstition  she  is  supposed  to  have  had  a  motherly 
interest  in  all  children  born  beyond  seas,  including,  of 
course,  the  American  colonies,  and  she  is  of  a  presence 
that  her  foster-folk's  descendants  need  not  be  ashamed 
of.  Our  tram  took  us  now  and  then  by  an  old  mansion 
of  almost  manor-house  dignity,  set  in  pleasant  gardens; 
and  it  followed  the  shore  of  the  Thames  in  sight  of  the 
masts  of  ships  whose  multitude  brought  me  to  disgrace 
for  having,  on  my  way  to  Greenwich,  thought  poorly 
of  London  as  a  port,  and  which,  because  of  her  riparian 
situation,  made  Stepney  the  scene  of  the  great  strike  of 
the  London  dockers,  when  they  won  their  fight  under 
the  lead  of  John  Burns. 

Our  lovely  weather  cooled  slightly  as  the  afternoon 
wore  away,  but  it  was  bright  and  mild  again  when  we 
came  another  day  towards  Stepney  as  far  as  the  old 
church  of  St.  Dunstan.  It  is  an  edifice  of  good  perpen 
dicular  Gothic,  with  traces  of  early  English  and  even  of 
later  Norman,  standing  serene  in  a  place  of  quiet  graves 
amid  the  surrounding  turmoil  of  life.  The  church 
yard  was  full  of  rustling  shrubs  and  bright  with  beds  of 
autumnal  flowers,  from  which  the  old  square  tower 
rose  in  the  mellow  air.  Divers  of  our  early  emigrants 
were  baptized  in  St.  Dunstan's,  namely,  the  wife  of 

207 


LONDON   FILMS 

Governor  Bradford  of  Plymouth,  with  many  of  our  ship- 
men,  notably  that  Master  Willoughby,  who  established 
the  ship -yard  at  Charlestown,  Massachusetts.  I  like 
better  to  associate  with  it  our  beginnings,  because  here 
I  first  saw  those  decorations  for  the  Thanksgiving 
festival  which  the  English  have  lately  borrowed  from 
us,  and  which  I  found  again  and  again  at  various  points 
in  my  September  wanderings.  The  pillars  were  wreathed 
with  the  flowers  and  leaves  of  the  fall;  the  altar  was 
decked  with  apples  and  grapes,  and  the  pews  trimmed 
with  yellow  heads  of  ripe  wheat.  The  English  Thanks 
giving  comes  earlier  than  ours,  but  it  remembers  its 
American  source  in  its  name,  and  the  autumn  comes 
so  much  sooner  than  with  us  that  although  the  "  parting 
summer  lingering  blooms  delayed"  in  St.  Dunstan's 
church-yard,  the  fallen  leaves  danced  and  whirled  about 
our  feet  in  the  paths. 

There  is  witness  of  the  often  return  of  the  exiles  to 
their  old  home  in  the  quaint  epitaph  which  a  writer  in 
The  Spectator  (it  might  have  been  Addison  himself)  read 
from  one  of  the  flat  tombstones: 

"Here  Thomas  Taffin  lyes  interred,  ah  why? 
Born  in  New  England,  did  in  London  die." 

"I  do  not  wonder  at  this/'  Dr.  Johnson  said  of  the 
epitaph  to  Boswell.  "It  would  have  been  strange  if 
born  in  London  he  had  died  in  New  England.'7 

The  good  doctor  did  indeed  despise  the  American 
colonies  with  a  contempt  which  we  can  almost  reverence ; 
but  the  thing  which  he  found  so  strange  happened  to 
many  Londoners  before  his  time.  One  of  the  least 
worthy  and  less  known  of  these  was  that  George  Down 
ing,  who  came  back  from  Boston,  where  he  was  grad 
uated  at  Harvard,  and  took  the  title  of  baronet  from 

208 


AMERICAN   ORIGINS— MOSTLY   SOUTHERN 

Charles  II.,  in  return,  apparently,  for  giving  his  name 
to  that  famous  Downing  Street,  ever  since  synonymous 
with  English  administration.  If  he  has  no  other  claim 
to  our  interest,  that  is  perhaps  enough;  and  the  Amer 
ican  who  is  too  often  abashed  by  the  humility  of  our 
London  origins  may  well  feel  a  rise  of  worldly  pride  in 
the  London  celebrity  of  this  quandam  fellow-citizen. 
His  personality  is  indeed  lost  in  it,  but  his  achievement 
in  laying  out  a  street,  and  getting  it  called  after  him, 
was  prophetic  of  so  much  economic  enterprise  of  ours 
that  it  may  be  fairly  claimed  as  a  national  honor. 

Of  those  who  preferred  not  to  risk  the  fate  Dr.  John 
son  held  in  scorn,  multitudes  perished  at  Whitechapel 
of  the  plague  which  it  was  one  of  the  poor  compensa 
tions  of  life  in  New  England  to  escape.  They  would  all 
have  been  dead  by  now,  whether  they  went  or  whether 
they  stayed,  though  it  was  hard  not  to  attribute  their 
present  decease  solely  to  their  staying,  as  we  turned  over 
the  leaves  of  the  old  register  in  St.  Mary  Matfelon's, 
Whitechapel.  The  church  has  been  more  than  once 
rebuilt  out  of  recollection  of  its  original  self,  and  there 
were  workman  still  doing  something  to  the  interior ;  but 
the  sexton  led  us  into  the  vestry,  and  while  the  sunlight 
played  through  the  waving  trees  without  and  softly 
illumined  the  record,  we  turned  page  after  page,  where 
the  names  were  entered  in  a  fair  clear  hand,  with  the 
given  cause  of  death  shortened  to  the  letters,  pi.,  after 
each.  They  were  such  names  as  abounded  in  the  colo 
nies,  and  those  who  had  borne  them  must  have  been  of 
the  kindred  of  the  emigrants.  But  my  patriotic  inter 
est  in  them  was  lost  in  a  sense  of  the  strong  nerve  of 
the  clerk  who  had  written  their  names  and  that  "pi." 
with  such  an  unshaken  hand.  One  of  the  earlier  dead, 
in  the  church -yard  without,  was  a  certain  ragman, 

209 


LONDON    FILMS 

Richard  Brandon,  of  whom  the  register  says:  "This 
R.  Brandon  is  supposed  to  have  cut  off  the  head  of 
Charles  the  First." 

From  the  parish  of  St.  Botolph  by  Aldgate,  on  the 
road  from  Houndsditch  to  Whitechapel,  came  many  of 
those  who  settled  in  Salem  and  the  neighboring  towns 
of  Massachusetts.  It  is  now  very  low  church,  as  it 
probably  was  in  their  day,  with  a  plain  interior,  and 
with  the  crimson  foliage  of  the  Virginia-creeper  staining 
the  light  like  painted  glass  at  one  of  its  windows.  The 
bare  triangular  space  in  front  of  the  church  was  once  a 
pit  where  the  dead  of  the  plague  were  thrown,  and  in 
the  sacristy  is  a  thing  of  yet  grislier  interest.  My 
friend  made  favor  with  some  outlying  authority,  and  an 
old,  dim,  silent  servitor  of  some  sort  came  back  with 
him  and  took  from  a  sort  of  cupboard,  where  it  was  kept 
in  a  glass  box,  the  embalmed  head  of  the  Duke  of  Suf 
folk,  which  he  lost  for  his  part  in  the  short-lived  usurpa 
tion  of  his  daughter,  Lady  Jane  Grey.  Little  was  left 
to  suggest  the  mighty  noble  in  the  mummy-face,  but  the 
tragedy  of  his  death  was  all  there.  It  seemed  as  if  the 
thoughts  of  the  hideous  last  moment  might  still  be 
haunting  the  withered  brain,  and  the  agony  of  which 
none  of  the  dead  have  yet  been  able  to  impart  a  sense 
to  the  living,  was  present  in  it.  As  he  who  was  showing 
us  the  head,  turned  it  obligingly  round  in  view  of  the  ex 
pected  shilling,  and  tilted  it  forward  that  we  might  see 
the  mark  of  the  axe  in  the  severed  neck,  one  seemed  to 
see  also  the  things  which  those  sunken  eyes  had  looked  on 
last :  the  swarming  visages  of  the  crowd,  the  inner  fringe 
of  halberdiers,  the  black  -  visored  figure  waiting  beside 
the  block.  As  the  doomed  man  dragged  himself  to  the 
scaffold,  how  pale  that  face  in  the  glass  box  must  have 
been,  for  any  courage  that  kept  him  above  his  fate.  It 

210 


AMERICAN   ORIGINS— MOSTLY   SOUTHERN 

was  all  very  vivid,  and  the  more  incredible  therefore  that 
such  a  devilish  thing  as  the  death  -  punishment  should 
still  be,  and  that  governments  should  keep  on  surpass 
ing  in  the  anguish  they  inflict  the  atrocity  of  the  cruel- 
est  murderers.  If  the  Salem-born  Hawthorne  ever  vis 
ited  that  church  in  remembrance  of  the  fact  that  his 
people  came  from  the  same  parish ;  if  he  saw  the  mortal 
relic  which  held  me  in  such  fascination  that  I  could 
scarcely  leave  the  place  even  when  the  glass  box  had 
been  locked  back  to  its  cupboard,  and  if  the  spirits  of 
the  dead  sometimes  haunt  their  dust,  there  must  have 
been  a  reciprocal  intelligence  between  the  dead  and  the 
living  that  left  no  emotion  of  the  supreme  hour  unim- 
parted. 

We  visited  St.  Sepulchre's  where  the  truly  sainted 
Roger  Williams  was  baptized,  and  found  entrance  one 
day  after  two  failures  to  penetrate  to  its  very  unattrac 
tive  interior.  We  were  lighted  by  stained  -  glass  win 
dows  of  geometrical  pattern  and  a  sort  of  calico  or  ging 
ham  effect  in  their  coloring,  to  the  tablet  to  Captain 
John  Smith,  whose  life  Pocahontas,  in  Virginia,  with 
other  ladies  in  divers  parts  of  the  world,  saved,  that  we 
might  have  one  of  the  most  delightful,  if  not  one  of  the 
most  credible,  of  autobiographies.  He  was  of  prime 
colonial  interest,  of  course,  and  we  were  not  taken  from 
the  thought  of  him  by  any  charm  of  the  place;  but 
when  we  had  identified  his  time-dimmed  tablet  there 
was  no  more  to  do  at  St.  Sepulchre's.  The  church  is  at 
the  western  end  of  Old  Bailey,  and  in  the  dreadful  old 
times  when  every  Friday  brought  its  batch  of  doomed 
men  forth  from  the  cells,  it  was  the  duty  of  the  bell 
man  of  St.  Sepulchre's  to  pass  under  the  prison  walls 
the  night  before  and  ring  his  bell,  and  chant  the  dismal 
lines : 

211 


LONDON   FILMS 

"All  you  that  in  the  condemned  hold  do  lie, 
Prepare  you,  for  to-morrow  you  shall  die; 
Watch  all,  and  pray,  the  hour  is  drawing  near, 
That  you  before  the  Almighty  must  appear; 
Examine  well  yourselves,  in  time  repent, 
That  you  may  not  to  eternal  flames  be  sent, 
And  when  St.  Sepulchre's  bell  to-morrow  tolls, 
The  Lord  above  have  mercy  on  your  souls. 

Past  twelve  o'clock." 

When  we  consider  what  piety  was  in  the  past,  we  need 
not  be  so  horrified  by  justice.  Sentiment  sometimes 
came  in  to  heighten  the  effect  of  both,  and  it  used  to 
present  each  criminal  in  passing  St.  Sepulchre's  on  the 
way  to  Tyburn  with  a  nosegay,  and  a  little  farther  on 
with  a  glass  of  beer.  The  gardened  strip  of  what  once 
must  have  been  a  graveyard  beside  the  church  could 
hardly  have  afforded  flowers  enough  for  the  pious  rite.  It 
was  frequented,  the  day  of  our  visit,  by  some  old  men 
of  a  very  vacant-looking  leisure,  who  sat  on  the  benches 
in  the  path;  and  the  smallest  girl  in  proportion  to  the 
baby  she  carried  that  I  ever  saw  in  that  England  where 
small  girls  seem  always  to  carry  such  very  large  babies, 
tilted  back  and  forth  with  it  in  her  slender  arms,  and 
tried  to  make-believe  it  was  going  to  sleep. 

The  reader  who  prefers  to  develop  these  films  for 
himself  must  not  fail  to  bring  out  the  surroundings  of 
the  places  visited,  if  he  would  have  the  right  effect. 
Otherwise  he  might  suppose  the  several  sanctuaries 
which  we  visited  standing  in  a  dignified  space  and  hal 
lowed  quiet,  whereas,  all  but  a  few  were  crowded  close 
upon  crowded  streets,  with  the  busy  and  noisy  indiffer 
ence  of  modern  life  passing  before  them  and  round  them. 
St.  Giles-in-the-Fields,  which  we  visited  after  leaving  St. 
Sepulchre,  was  the  church  in  which  Calvert,  the  founder 

212 


AMERICAN    ORIGINS— MOSTLY   SOUTHERN 

of  Maryland,  was  baptized,  of  course  before  he  turned 
Catholic,  since  it  could  not  very  well  have  been  after 
wards.  At  the  moment,  however,  I  did  not  think  of 
this.  I  had  enough  to  do  with  the  fact  that  Chapman, 
the  translator  of  Homer,  was  buried  in  that  church,  and 
Andrew  Marvell,  the  poet,  and  that  very  wicked  Coun 
tess  of  Shrewsbury,  the  terrible  she  who  held  the  Duke 
of  Buckingham's  horse  while  he  was  killing  her  husband 
in  a  duel.  I  should,  no  doubt,  have  seen  this  mem 
orable  interior  if  it  had  still  existed,  but  it  was  the  in 
terior  of  a  church  which  was  taken  down  more  than  a 
hundred  years  before  the  present  church  was  built. 

We  visited  the  church  on  the  way  to  Lincoln's  Inn 
Fields,  turning  out  of  Holborn  round  the  corner  of  the 
house,  now  a  bookseller's  shop,  where  Garrick  died.  I 
mention  this  merely  as  an  instance  of  how  the  famous 
dead  started  out  of  the  over-populated  London  past 
and  tried  at  every  step  to  keep  me  from  my  proper 
search  for  our  meaner  American  origins.  I  was  going 
to  look  at  certain  mansions,  in  which  the  Lords  Balti 
more  used  to  live,  and  the  patriotic  Marylander,  if  he 
have  faith  enough,  may  identify  them  by  their  arches 
of  gray  stone  at  the  first  corner  on  his  right  in  coming 
into  the  place  from  Holborn.  But  if  he  have  not  faith 
enough  for  this,  then  he  may  respond  with  a  throb  of 
sympathy  to  the  more  universal  appeal  of  the  undoubted 
fact  that  Lord  Russell  was  beheaded  in  the  centre  of  the 
square,  which  now  waves  so  pleasantly  with  its  elms 
and  poplars.  The  cruel  second  James,  afterwards  king, 
wanted  him  beheaded  before  his  own  house,  but  the 
cynical  second  Charles  was  not  quite  so  cruel  as  that, 
and  rejected  the  proposed  dramatic  fancy  "as  inde 
cent,"  Burnet  says.  So  Lord  Russell,  after  Tillotson 
had  prayed  with  him,  "  laid  his  head  on  the  block  at  a 

213 


LONDON    FILMS 

spot  which  the  elms  and  poplars  now  hide,  and  it  was 
cut  off  at  two  strokes. " 

Cunningham  is  certainly  very  temperate  in  calling 
Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  "a  noble  square."  I  should  my 
self  call  it  one  of  the  noblest  and  most  beautiful  in 
London,  and  if  the  Calverts  did  not  dwell  in  one  of  the 
stately  mansions  of  Arch  Row,  which  is  "  all  that  Inigo 
Jones  lived  to  build'7  after  his  design  for  the  whole 
square,  then  they  might  very  well  have  been  proud  to 
do  so.  They  are  not  among  the  great  whom  Cunning 
ham  names  as  having  dwelt  there,  and  I  do  not  know 
what  foundation  the  tradition  of  their  residence  rests 
upon.  What  seems  more  certain  is  that  one  of  the  Cal 
verts,  the  first  or  the  second  Lord  Baltimore,  was  buried 
in  that  church  of  St.  Dunstan's  in  the  West,  or  St.  Dun- 
stan's  Fleet  Street,  which  was  replaced  by  the  actual 
edifice  in  1833. 

The  reader,  now  being  got  so  near,  may  as  well  go  on 
with  me  to  Charing  Cross,  where  in  the  present  scene 
of  cabs,  both  hansoms  and  four  -  wheelers,  perpetually 
coming  and  going  at  the  portals  of  the  great  station  and 
hotel,  and  beside  the  torrent  of  omnibuses  in  the  Strand, 
the  Reverend  Hugh  Peters  suffered  death  through  the 
often  broken  faith  of  Charles  II.  In  one  of  the  most  de 
lightful  of  his  essays,  Lowell  humorously  portrays  the 
character  of  the  man  who  met  this  tragic  fate :  a  restless 
and  somewhat  fatuous  Puritan  divine,  who,  having 
once  got  safely  away  from  persecution  to  Boston,  came 
back  to  London  in  the  Civil  War,  and  took  part  in  the 
trial  of  Charles  I.  If  not  one  of  the  regicides,  he  was 
very  near  one,  and  he  shared  the  doom  from  which  the 
treacherous  pardon  of  Charles  II.  was  never  intended 
to  save  them.  I  suppose  his  fatuity  was  not  incom 
patible  with  tragedy,  though  somehow  we  think  that 

214 


AMERICAN   ORIGINS— MOSTLY   SOUTHERN 

absurd  people   are   not    the   stuff   of   serious   experi 
ence. 

Leigh  Hunt,  in  that  most  delightful  of  all  books  about 
London,  The  Town,  tells  us  that  No.  7  Craven  Street, 
Strand,  was  once  the  dwelling  of  Benjamin  Franklin, 
and  he  adds,  with  the  manliness  which  is  always  such  a 
curious  element  of  his  unmanliness:  "What  a  change 
along  the  shore  of  the  Thames  in  a  few  years  (for  two 
centuries  are  less  than  a  few  in  the  lapse  of  time)  from 
the  residence  of  a  set  of  haughty  nobles,  who  never 
dreamt  that  a  tradesman  could  be  anything  but  a 
tradesman,  to  that  of  a  yeoman's  son,  and  a  printer, 
who  was  one  of  the  founders  of  a  great  state!" 

Not  far  away  in  one  of  the  houses  of  Essex  Street, 
Strand,  a  state  which  led  in  the  attempted  dismember 
ment  of  that  great  state,  and  nearly  wrought  its  ruin, 
had  a  formal  beginning,  for  it  is  said  that  it  was  there 
John  Locke  wrote  the  constitution  of  South  Carolina, 
which  still,  I  believe,  remains  its  organic  law.  One  has 
one's  choice  among  the  entirely  commonplace  yellow 
brick  buildings,  which  give  the  street  the  aspect  of  an 
old-fashioned  place  in  Boston.  The  street  was  seriously 
quiet  the  afternoon  of  our  visit,  with  only  a  few  foot- 
passengers  sauntering  through  it,  and  certain  clerklike 
youth  entering  and  issuing  from  the  doors  of  the  build- 
dings  which  had  the  air  of  being  law-offices. 

We  used  as  a  pretext  for  visiting  the  Temple  the  very 
attenuated  colonial  fact  that  some  Mortons  akin  to 
him  of  Merrymount  in  Massachusetts,  have  their  tombs 
and  tablets  in  the  triforium  of  the  Temple  Church. 
But  when  we  had  climbed  to  the  triforium  by  the  cork 
screw  stairs  leading  to  it,  did  we  find  there  tombs  and 
tablets?  I  am  not  sure,  but  I  am  sure  we  found  the 
tomb  of  that  Edward  Gibbon  who  wrote  a  History  of  the 
is  215 


LONDON    FILMS 

Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  and  who  while 
in  Parliament  strongly  favored  "distressing  the  Amer 
icans,"  as  the  king  wished,  and  made  a  speech  in  sup 
port  of  the  government  measure  for  closing  the  port  of 
Boston.  I  did  not  bear  him  any  great  grudge  for  that, 
but  I  could  not  give  myself  to  his  monument  with  such 
cordial  affection  as  I  felt  for  that  of  the  versatile  and 
volatile  old  letter-writer  James  Howell,  which  also  I 
found  in  that  triforium,  half -hidden  behind  a  small 
organ,  with  an  epitaph  too  undecipherable  in  the  dim 
ness  for  my  patience.  It  was  so  satisfactory  to  find  this, 
after  looking  in  vain  for  any  record  of  him  at  Jesus 
College  in  Oxford,  where  he  studied  the  humanities  that 
enabled  him  to  be  so  many  things  to  so  many  masters, 
that  I  took  all  his  chiselled  praises  for  granted. 

I  made  what  amends  I  could  for  my  slight  of  the 
Mortons  in  the  Temple  Church,  by  crossing  presently 
to  Clifford's  Inn,  Strand,  where  the  very  founder  of 
Merrymount,  the  redoubtable  Thomas  Morton  himself 
was  sometime  student  of  the  law  and  a  dweller  in  these 
precincts.  It  is  now  the  hall  of  the  Art  Workers'  Guild, 
and  anywhere  but  in  London  would  be  incredibly  quiet 
and  quaint  in  that  noisy,  commonplace,  modern  neigh 
borhood.  It  in  nowise  remembers  the  disreputable  and 
roistering  antipuritan,  who  set  up  his  May -pole  at 
Wollaston,  and  danced  about  it  with  his  debauched 
aboriginies,  in  defiance  of  the  saints,  till  Miles  Standish 
marched  up  from  Plymouth  and  made  an  end  of  such 
ungodly  doings  at  the  muzzles  of  his  matchlocks. 

It  must  have  been  another  day  that  we  went  to  view  the 
church  of  St.  Botolph  without  Aldersgate,  because  some 
of  the  patrician  families  emigrating  to  Massachusetts 
were  from  that  parish,  which  was  the  home  of  many 
patrician  families  of  the  Commonwealth.  In  St.  An- 

216 


AMERICAN    ORIGINS— MOSTLY   SOUTHERN 

drew's  Holborn,  the  Vanes,  father  and  son,  worshipped, 
together  with  the  kindred  of  many  that  had  gone  to 
dwell  beyond  seas.  It  is  a  large  impressive  interior, 
after  the  manner  of  Wren,  and  at  the  moment  of  our 
visit  was  smelling  of  varnish;  most  London  churches 
smell  of  mortar,  when  in  course  of  their  pretty  constant 
reparation,  and  this  was  at  least  a  change.  St.  Stephen's 
Coleman-Street,  may  draw  the  Connecticut  exile,  as 
the  spiritual  home  of  that  Reverend  Mr.  Davenport, 
who  was  the  founder  of  New  Haven,  but  it  will  attract 
the  unlocalized  lover  of  liberty  because  it  was  also  the 
parish  church  of  the  Five  Members  of  Parliament  whom 
Charles  I.  tried  to  arrest  when  he  began  looking  for 
trouble.  It  had  a  certain  sentiment  of  low-churchness, 
being  very  plain  without  and  within  not  unlike  an 
Orthodox  church  in  some  old-fashioned  New  England 
town.  One  entered  to  it  by  a  very  neatly-paved,  clean 
court,  out  of  a  business  neighborhood,  jostled  by  com 
mercial  figures  in  sack-coats  and  top-hats  who  were  ex 
pressive  in  their  way  of  a  non-conformity  in  sympathy 
with  the  past  if  not  with  the  present  of  St.  Andrew's. 

St.  Martins-in-the-Fields,  where  General  Oglethorpe, 
the  founder  of  Georgia,  was  baptized,  was,  in  his  time, 
one  of  the  proudest  parishes  of  the  city,  and  the  actual 
church  is  thought  to  be  the  masterpiece  of  the  architect 
Gibbs,  who  produced  in  the  portico  what  Cunningham 
calls  "one  of  the  finest  pieces  of  architecture  in  Lon 
don."  Many  famous  people  were  buried  in  the  earlier 
edifice,  including  Nell  Gwynne,  Lord  Mohun,  who  fell 
in  a  duel  with  the  Duke  of  Hamilton,  as  the  readers  of 
Henry  Esmond  well  know,  and  Farquhar  the  dramatist. 
Lord  Bacon  was  baptized  there;  and  the  interior  of  the 
church  is  very  noble  and  worthy  of  him  and  of  the 
parish  history.  Whether  General  Oglethorpe  drew 

217 


LONDON    FILMS 

upon  his  native  parish  in  promoting  the  settlement  of 
Georgia,  I  am  not  so  sure  as  I  am  of  some  other  things, 
as,  for  instance,  that  he  asked  the  king  for  a  grant  of 
land,  "in  trust  for  the  poor,"  and  that  his  plan  was  to 
people  his  colony  largely  from  the  captives  in  the  debt 
ors'  prisons.  I  love  his  memory  for  that,  and  I  would 
gladly  have  visited  the  debtors'  prisons  which  his  hu 
manity  vacated  if  I  could  have  found  them,  or  if  they 
had  still  existed. 

The  reader  who  has  had  the  patience  to  accompany 
me  on  these  somewhat  futile  errands  must  have  been 
aware  of  making  them  largely  on  the  lordly  omnibus- 
tops  which  I  always  found  so  much  to  my  proud  taste. 
Often,  however,  we  whisked  together  from  point  to 
point  in  hansoms;  often  we  made  our  way  on  foot,  with 
those  quick  transitions  from  the  present  to  the  past, 
from  the  rush  and  roar  of  business  thoroughfares  to  the 
deep  tranquillity  of  religious  interiors,  or  the  noise- 
bound  quiet  of  ancient  church-yards,  where  the  autumn 
flowers  blazed  under  the  withering  autumn  leaves,  and 
the  peaceful  occupants  of  the  public  benches  were 
scarcely  more  agitated  by  our  coming  than  the  tenants 
of  the  graves  beside  them. 

The  weather  was  for  the  most  part  divinely  beautiful, 
so  tenderly  and  evenly  cool  and  warm,  with  a  sort  of 
lingering  fondness  in  the  sunshine,  as  if  it  were  prescient 
of  the  fogs  so  soon  to  blot  it.  The  first  of  these  came  on 
the  last  day  of  our  research,  when  suddenly  we  dropped 
from  the  clouded  surfaces  of  the  earth  to  depths  where 
the  tube-line  trains  carry  their  passengers  from  one 
brilliantly  lighted  station  to  another.  We  took  three 
of  the  different  lines,  experimentally,  rather  than  neces 
sarily,  in  going  from  St.  Mary  Woolnoth,  in  Lombard 
Street,  hard  by  the  Bank  of  England,  to  the  far  neigh- 

218 


ANCIENT    CHURCH    OF    ST.    MARTINS-IN-THE-FIELDS 


AMERICAN   ORIGINS— MOSTLY   SOUTHERN 

borhood  of  Stoke  Newington;  and  at  each  descent  by 
the  company's  lift,  we  left  the  dark  above  ground,  and 
found  the  light  fifty  feet  below.  While  this  sort  of 
transit  is  novel,  it  is  delightful;  the  air  is  good,  or  seems 
so,  and  there  is  a  faint  earthy  smell,  somewhat  like  that 
of  stale  incense  in  Italian  churches,  which  I  found 
agreeable  from  association  at  least;  besides,  I  liked  to 
think  of  passing  so  far  beneath  all  the  superincumbent 
death  and  all  the  superambulant  life  of  the  immense 
immemorial  town. 

We  found  St.  Mary  Woolnoth  closed,  being  too  early 
for  the  Sunday  service,  and  had  to  content  ourselves 
with  the  extremely  ugly  outside  of  the  church  which  is 
reputed  the  masterpiece  of  Wren's  pupil  Hawksmoor; 
while  we  took  for  granted  the  tablet  or  monument  of 
Sir  William  Phipps,  the  governor  of  Massachusetts, 
who  went  back  to  be  buried  there  after  the  failure  of  his 
premature  expedition  against  Quebec.  My  friend  had 
provided  me  something  as  remote  from  Massachusetts 
as  South  Carolina  in  colonial  interest,  and  we  were 
presently  speeding  to  New  River,  which  Sir  Hugh  Myd- 
dleton  taught  to  flow  through  the  meadows  of  Stoke 
Newington  to  all  the  streets  of  London,  and  so  originated 
her  modern  water-supply.  This  knight,  or  baronet, 
he  declared,  upon  the  faith  of  a  genealogist,  to  be  of 
the  ancestry  of  that  family  of  Middletons  who  were  of 
the  first  South  Carolinians  then  and  since.  It  is  at  least 
certain  that  he  was  a  Welshman,  and  that  the  gift  of 
his  engineering  genius  to  London  was  so  ungratefully 
received  that  he  was  left  wellnigh  ruined  by  his  enter 
prise.  The  king  claimed  a  half-interest  in  the  profits,  but 
the  losses  remained  undivided  to  Myddleton.  The  fact, 
such  as  it  is,  proves  perhaps  the  weakest  link  in  a  chain 
of  patriotic  associations  which,  I  am  afraid  the  reader 

219 


LONDON    FILMS 

must  agree  with  me,  has  no  great  strength  anywhere. 
The  New  River  itself,  when  you  come  to  it,  is  a  plain 
straightforward,  canal -like  water -course  through  a 
grassy  and  shady  level,  but  it  is  interesting  for  the  gar 
den  of  Charles  Lamb's  first  house  backing  upon  it,  and 
for  the  incident  of  some  of  his  friends  walking  into  it 
one  night  when  they  left  him  after  an  evening  that 
might  have  been  rather  unusually  "smoky  and  drinky." 
Apart  from  this  I  cared  for  it  less  than  for  the  neighbor 
hoods  through  which  I  got  to  it,  and  which  were  looking 
their  best  in  the  blur  of  the  fog.  This  was  softest  and 
richest  among  the  low  trees  of  Highbury  Fields,  where, 
when  we  ascended  to  them  from  our  tubular  station,  the 
lawns  were  of  an  electric  green  in  their  vividness.  In 
fact,  when  it  is  not  blindingly  thick,  a  London  fog  lends 
itself  to  the  most  charming  effects.  It  caresses  the  pre 
vailing  commonness  and  ugliness,  and  coaxes  it  into 
a  semblance  of  beauty  in  spite  of  itself.  The  rows  upon 
rows  of  humble  brick  dwellings  in  the  streets  we  passed 
through  were  flattered  into  cottage  homes  where  one 
would  have  liked  to  live  in  one's  quieter  moods,  and 
some  rather  stately  eighteenth  -  century  mansions  in 
Stoke  Newington  housed  one's  pride  the  more  fittingly, 
because  of  the  mystery  which  the  fog  added  to  their 
antiquity.  It  hung  tenderly  and  reverently  about 
that  old,  old  parish  church  of  Stoke  Newington  where, 
it  is  story  or  fable,  they  that  bore  the  body  of  the  dead 
King  Harold  from  the  field  of  Hastings  made  one  of 
their  stations  on  the  way  to  Waltham  Abbey ;  and  it  was 
much  in  the  maundering  mind  of  the  kindly  spectator 
who  could  not  leave  off  pitying  us  because  we  could  not 
get  into  the  church,  the  sexton  having  just  before  gone 
down  the  street  to  the  baker's.  It  followed  us  more 
and  more  vaguely  into  the  business  quarter  where  we 

220 


AMERICAN    ORIGINS— MOSTLY   SOUTHERN 

took  our  omnibus,  and  where  we  noted  that  business  Lon 
don,  like  business  New  York,  was  always  of  the  same 
complexion  and  temperament  in  its  shops  and  saloons, 
from  centre  to  circumference.  Amid  the  commonplace- 
ness  of  Islington  where  we  changed  omnibuses,  the  fog 
abandoned  us  in  despair,  and  rising  aloof,  dissolved  into 
the  bitterness  of  a  small  cold  rain. 


XIX 

ASPECTS   AND    INTIMATIONS 

THE  fog,  through  that  golden  month  of  September 
(September  is  so  silvern  in  America),  was  more  or 
less  a  fact  of  the  daily  weather.  The  morning  began 
in  a  mellow  mistiness,  which  the  sun  burned  through 
by  noon;  or  if  sometimes  there  was  positive  rain,  it 
would  clear  for  a  warm  sunset,  which  had  moments  of 
a  very  pretty  pensiveness  in  the  hollows  of  Green  Park, 
or  by  the  lakes  of  St.  James's.  There  were  always  the 
bright  beds  of  autumn  flowers,  and  in  Hyde  Park  some 
thing  of  the  season's  flush  came  back  in  the  driving. 
The  town  began  to  be  visibly  fuller,  and  I  was  aware  of 
many  Americans,  in  carriages  and  on  foot,  whom  I 
fancied  alighting  after  a  continental  summer,  and 
poising  for  another  flight  to  their  respective  steamers. 
The  sentiment  of  London  was  quite  different  at  the  end 
of  September  from  the  sentiment  of  London  at  the  be 
ginning,  and  one  could  imagine  the  sort  of  secondary 
season  which  it  revisits  in  the  winter.  There  was  in 
deed  no  hint  of  the  great  primary  season  in  the  sacred 
paddock  of  beauty  and  fashion  in  Hyde  Park,  where 
the  inverted  penny  chairs  lay  with  their  foreheads  in 
the  earth;  and  the  shrivelled  leaves,  loosened  from  their 
boughs  in  the  windless  air,  dropped  listlessly  round 
them. 
At  night  our  little  Mayfair  Street  was  the  haunt  of 

222 


ASPECTS   AND   INTIMATIONS 

much  voluntary  minstrelsy.  Bands  of  cockney  darkeys 
came  down  it,  tuning  their  voices  to  our  native  rag 
time.  Or  a  balladist,  man  or  woman,  took  the  centre, 
and  sang  towards  our  compassionate  windows.  Or  a 
musical  husband  and  wife  placed  their  portable  melodeon 
on  the  opposite  sidewalk,  and  trained  their  vocal  and  in 
strumental  attack  upon  the  same  weak  defences. 

It  was  all  in  keeping  with  the  simple  kindliness  of  the 
great  town  whose  homelikeness  arises  from  its  immense 
habitability.  This  always  strikes  the  New-Yorker, 
whether  native  or  adoptive,  if  he  be  a  thoughtful  New- 
Yorker,  and  goes  about  the  different  regions  of  the 
ampler  metropolis  with  an  abiding  sense  of  the  restricted 
spaces  where  man  may  peacefully  dwell,  or  quietly 
lodge  over-night,  in  his  own  city.  In  assimilating  each 
of  the  smaller  towns  or  villages  which  it  has  made  itself 
up  of  London  has  left  them  so  much  of  their  original 
character  that  though  merged,  they  are  not  lost ;  and  in 
cases  where  they  have  been  so  long  merged  as  to  have 
experienced  a  severance  of  consciousness,  or  where  they 
are  only  nominally  different  sections  of  the  vast  whole, 
they  have  each  its  own  temperament.  It  would  be 
quite  impossible  for  one  finding  one's  self  in  Blooms- 
bury  to  suppose  one's  self  in  Belgravia,  or  in  any  of  the 
Kensingtons  to  fancy  one's  self  in  Mayfair.  Chelsea  is 
as  temperamentally  different  from  Pimlico  as  the  City 
from  Southwark,  and  Islington,  again,  though  it  speaks 
the  same  language  as  Whitechapel,  might  well  be  of 
another  tongue,  so  differently  does  it  think  and  feel. 
The  names,  and  a  hundred  others,  call  to  the  stranger 
from  the  sides  and  fronts  and  backs  of  omnibuses,  until 
he  has  a  weird  sense  that  they  personally  knew  him 
long  before  he  knew  them.  But  when  once  domesti 
cated  in  any  quarter  he  is  so  quickly  at  home  in  it  that 

223 


LONDON    FILMS 

it  will  be  the  centre  of  London  for  him,  coming  to  and 
going  from  it  in  a  local  acceptance  which  he  cannot  help 
feeling  a  reciprocal  kindliness.  He  might  do  this  as  a 
mere  hotel-dweller,  but  if  he  has  given  hostages  to 
fortune  by  going  into  lodgings,  and  forming  even  in 
direct  relations  with  the  tradesmen  round  the  corners, 
the  little  stationers  and  newsmen,  the  nearest  book 
seller,  the  intelligent  female  infants  in  the  post-office 
(which  is  always  within  a  minute's  walk),  and  perhaps 
conversed  with  the  neighboring  policeman,  or  has  taken 
cabs  so  often  from  the  neighboring  rank  as  to  be  recog 
nizable  to  the  cabmen,  then  he  is  more  quickly  and 
thoroughly  naturalized  in  the  chosen  region.  He  will 
be  unworthy  of  many  little  friendlinesses  from  his 
fellow-citizens  if  he  does  not  like  them,  and  he  will  miss, 
in  refusing  the  image  of  home  which  is  offered  him,  one 
of  the  rarest  consolations  of  exile. 

At  a  distance  from  London  (say  as  small  a  distance, 
in  time  if  not  space,  as  Bath),  you  will  hear  it  said  that 
everybody  is  well  in  London,  but  in  London  you  will 
find  that  the  hygienic  critics  or  authorities  distinguish. 
All  England,  indeed,  is  divided  into  parts  that  are  re 
laxing,  and  parts  that  are  bracing,  and  it  is  not  so  strange 
then  that  London  should  be  likewise  subdivided.  May- 
fair,  you  will  hear,  is  very  bracing,  but  Belgravia,  and 
more  particularly  Pimlico,  on  which  it  borders,  is  terri 
bly  relaxing.  Beyond  Pimlico,  Chelsea  again  is  bracing, 
and  as  for  South  Kensington  it  stands  to  reason  that  it 
is  bracing  because  it  is  very  high,  almost  as  high  as 
Mayfair.  If  you  pass  from  your  Pimlico  borderland  of 
Belgravia  to  either  of  those  regions  you  are  certainly 
not  sensible  of  any  sharp  accent,  but  there  is  no  telling 
what  a  gradual  rise  of  eight  or  ten  feet  may  make  in 
the  quality  of  the  air.  To  the  stranger  all  London  seems 

224 


ASPECTS   AND    INTIMATIONS 

a  vast  level,  with  perhaps  here  and  there  the  sort  of 
ground-swell  you  may  note  from  your  car-window  in 
the  passage  of  a  Western  plain.  Ludgate  Hill  is  truly 
a  rise  of  ground,  but  Tower  Hill  is  only  such  a  bad 
eminence  as  may  gloomily  lift  itself  in  history  irrespec 
tive  of  the  actual  topography.  Such  an  elevation  as 
our  own  Murray  Hill  would  be  a  noticeable  height  in 
London,  and  there  are  no  such  noble  inequalities  as  in 
our  up -town  streets  along  the  Hudson.  All  great 
modern  cities  love  the  plain  surfaces,  and  London  is 
not  different  from  Chicago,  or  Philadelphia,  or  Paris,  or 
Berlin,  or  Vienna,  or  St.  Petersburg,  or  Milan  in  this; 
New  York  is  much  more  mountainous,  and  Boston  is  a 
Sierra  Nevada  in  comparison. 

Yet,  I  suppose  there  must  be  something  in  the  super 
stition  that  one  part  of  London  is  more  bracing  or  more 
relaxing  than  another,  and  that  there  is  really,  however 
insensibly,  a  difference  of  levels.  That  difference  of 
temperaments  which  I  have  mentioned,  seems  mostly 
intimated  in  the  size  and  age  of  the  houses.  They  are 
larger  and  older  in  Bloomsbury,  where  they  express  a 
citizen  substance  arid  comfort;  they  are  statelier  about 
the  parks  and  squares  of  Belgravia,  which  is  compara 
tively  a  new  settlement;  but  there  are  more  little  houses 
among  the  grandeurs  of  Mayfair  which  is  of  the  same 
social  quality,  though  many  of  its  streets  crossing  from 
Piccadilly  have  quite  gone  to  shops  and  family  hotels 
and  lodgings.  It  is  more  irregular  and  ancient  than 
Belgravia,  and  its  grandeurs  have  a  more  casual  air. 
The  historic  mansions  crowded  by  the  clubs  towards 
Hyde  Park  Corner,  and  grouped  about  the  open  space 
into  which  Piccadilly  falters  there,  or  following  the  park 
in  the  flat  curve  of  Park  Lane,  have  not  the  effect  of 
withdrawal  and  exclusion  of  the  Belgravian  mansions; 

225 


LONDON   FILMS 

beyond  which  again  there  is  a  world  of  small  dwellings 
of  fainter  and  fainter  self-assertion  till  they  fade  into 
the  hopeless  plebeian  unconsciousness  of  Pimlico,  whose 
endless  streets  are  without  beauty  or  dignity.  Yet 
beyond  this  lost  realm  Chelsea  redeems  itself  in  a  grace 
of  domestic  architecture  and  an  atmosphere  of  aesthetic 
associations  which  make  it  a  favorite  abode  of  the 
tastes  as  well  as  the  means.  Kensington,  where  you 
arrive  after  what  seems  hopeless  straggling  through  the 
roaring  thoroughfare  prolonging  the  Fleet-and-Strand- 
derived  Piccadilly,  is  of  almost  equal  artistic  and  literary 
appeal,  but  is  older  and  perhaps  less  actual  in  its  claims 
upon  the  cultivated  sympathies.  In  either  of  these 
regions  the  polite  American  of  definite  resources  might, 
if  banished  from  the  republic,  dwell  in  great  material 
and  spiritual  comfort;  but  if  he  chose  Chelsea  for  his 
exile,  I  do  not  know  that  I  should  blame  his  preference. 
There  he  would  have  the  neighborhood  of  many  charm 
ing  people  whom  to  know  for  neighbors  would  add  a 
certain  grace  to  existence,  although  he  might  not  other 
wise  know  them.  Besides  he  would  have,  beyond  the 
Thames,  the  wooded  stretch  of  Battersea  Park,  if  his 
dwelling,  as  it  very  well  might,  looked  out  upon  the 
river  and  across  it;  and  in  the  distance  he  would  have 
the  roofs  and  chimneys  of  that  far  Southwark,  which 
no  one  seems  anxious  to  have  nearer  than,  say,  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  yet  which  being  a  part  of 
London  must  be  full  of  perfectly  delightful  people. 

Even  if  you  make-believe  that  Southwark  bears 
some  such  relation  to  London  as  Jersey  City  bears  to 
New  York  (but  the  image  is  very  imperfect)  still  New 
York,  you  are  aware,  can  never  domesticate  the  Hudson 
as  London  has  domesticated  the  Thames.  Our  river 
is  too  vast,  too  grand,  if  you  will,  ever  to  be  redeemed 

226 


ASPECTS   AND   INTIMATIONS 

from  its  primitive  wildness,  much  less  made  an  intimate 
part  of  the  city's  life.  It  may  be  laced  with  ferries  and 
bound  with  all  the  meshes  that  commerce  can  weave 
with  its  swift-flying  shuttles;  it  shall  be  tunnelled  and 
bridged  hereafter,  again  and  again,  but  its  mere  size 
will  keep  it  savage,  just  as  a  giant,  though  ever  so  ami 
able  and  good-natured,  could  not  imaginably  be  civilized 
as  a  man  of  the  usual  five-foot-six  may  be.  Among 
rivers  the  Thames  is  strictly  of  the  five-foot-six  average, 
and  is  therefore  perfectly  proportioned  to  the  little 
continent  of  which  it  is  the  Amazon  or  the  Mississippi. 
If  it  were  larger  it  would  make  England  ridiculous,  as 
Denmark,  for  instance,  is  made  ridiculous  by  the  sounds 
and  estuaries  that  sunder  it.  But  the  Thames  is  of 
just  the  right  size  to  be  held  in  London's  arms,  and  if  it 
is  not  for  her  the  graceful  plaything  that  the  Seine  is 
for  Paris,  it  is  more  suited  to  the  practical  nature  of 
London.  There  are,  so  far  as  I  noted,  no  whispering 
poplars  planted  by  the  brink  of  the  Thames,  but  I  feel 
sure  that  if  there  were,  and  there  were  citizens  fishing 
their  years  away  in  their  shade,  they  would  sometimes 
catch  a  fish,  which  the  life-long  anglers  in  the  Seine 
never  do.  That  forms  a  great  difference,  expressive 
of  a  lasting  difference  of  character  in  the  two  capitals. 
Along  the  Thames  the  trees  are  planted  on  the  successive 
Embankments,  in  a  beautiful  leafy  parkway  following 
its  course,  broken  here  and  there  by  public  edifices,  like 
the  Parliament  buildings,  but  forming  a  screen  most 
ly  uninterrupted,  behind  which  a  parade  of  grandiose 
hotels  does  not  altogether  hide  itself  from  the  river. 
Then  the  national  quality  of  the  English  stream  is  ex 
pressed  in  the  succession  of  bridges  which  span  it. 
These  are  uglier  than  any  that  cross  the  Seine ;  each  one, 
in  fact,  is  uglier  than  the  other,  till  you  come  to  the 

227 


LONDON   FILMS 

Tower  Bridge,  which  is  the  ugliest  of  all.  They  have  a 
strange  fascination,  and  quickly  endear  themselves  to 
the  stranger  who  lounges  on  their  parapets  and  looks 
down  upon  the  grimy  little  steamers  scuttling  under 
them,  or  the  uncouth  barges  pushed  and  pulled  over 
the  opacity  of  the  swift  puddle.  They  form  also  an  ad 
mirable  point  for  viewing  the  clumsy  craft  of  all  types 
which  the  falling  tide  leaves  wallowing  in  the  iridescent 
slime  of  the  shoals,  showing  their  huge  flanks,  and 
resting  their  blunt  snouts  on  the  mud-banks  in  a  slum 
berous  content. 

It  is  seldom  that  the  prospect  reveals  a  vessel  of  more 
dignified  proportions  or  presence,  though  in  my  drives 
along  one  of  the  Embankments  I  came  upon  a  steamer 
of  the  modest  size  which  we  used  to  think  large  when 
we  crossed  the  Atlantic  in  it,  but  which  might  be  swung 
among  the  small  boats  from  the  davits  of  a  latter-day 
liner.  This  vessel  always  had  an  admiring  crowd  about 
it,  and  I  suppose  it  had  some  peculiar  interest  for  the 
public  which  did  not  translate  itself  to  me.  As  far  as 
the  more  visible  commerce  of  the  more  sight-seen  parts 
of  the  Thames  is  concerned,  it  is  as  unimpressive  as 
may  be.  It  has  nothing  of  the  dramatic  presence  of  the 
shipping  in  the  Hudson  or  the  East  River,  with  its  light 
operatic  touches  in  the  gayly  painted  Sound  and  North 
River  steamboats.  You  must  go  as  far  at  least  as 
Stepney  on  the  Thames  before  you  begin  to  realize  that 
London  is  the  largest  port,  as  well  as  the  largest  city,  in 
the  world. 

There  are  certain  characteristics,  qualities,  of  London 
which  I  am  aware  of  not  calling  aright,  but  which  I 
will  call  sentiments  for  want  of  some  better  word.  One 
of  them  was  the  feel  of  the  night-air,  especially  late  in 
the  season,  when  there  was  a  waste  and  weariness  in  it 

228 


ASPECTS   AND    INTIMATIONS 

as  if  the  vast  human  endeavor  for  pleasure  and  success 
had  exhaled  its  despair  upon  it.  Whatever  there  was  of 
disappointment  hi  one's  past,  of  apprehension  in  one's 
future,  came  to  the  surface  of  the  spirit,  and  asserted  its 
unity  with  the  collective  melancholy.  It  was  not  ex 
actly  a  WeUschmerz ;  that  is  as  out-dated  as  the  roman 
tic  movement;  but  it  was  a  sort  of  scientific  relinquish- 
ment,  which  was  by  no  means  scornful  of  others,  or  too 
appreciative  of  one's  own  unrecognized  worth.  Through 
the  senses  it  related  itself  to  the  noises  of  the  quiescing 
city,  to  the  smell  of  its  tormented  dust,  to  the  whiff  of  a 
casual  cigar,  or  the  odor  of  the  herbage  and  foliage  in 
the  park  or  square  that  one  was  passing,  one  may  not  be 
more  definite  about  what  was  perhaps  nothing  at  all. 
But  I  fancy  that  relinquishment  of  any  sort  would  be 
easier  in  London  than  in  cities  of  simpler  interest  or 
smaller  population.  For  my  own  part  I  was  content  to 
deny  many  knowledges  that  I  would  have  liked  to  be 
lieve  myself  possessed  of,  and  to  go  about  clothed  in  my 
ignorance  as  in  a  garment,  or  defended  by  it  as  by 
armor.  There  was  a  sort  of  luxury  in  passing  through 
streets  memorable  for  a  thousand  things  and  as  dense 
with  associations  as  Long  Island  with  mosquitoes  when 
the  winds  are  low,  and  in  reflecting  that  I  need  not  be 
ashamed  for  neglecting  in  part  what  no  man  could 
know  in  whole.  I  really  suppose  that  upon  any  other 
terms  the  life  of  the  cultivated  American  would  be 
hardly  safe  from  his  own  violence  in  London.  If  one 
did  not  shut  one's  self  out  from  the  complex  appeal 
to  one's  higher  self  one  could  hardly  go  to  one's  tailor 
or  one's  hatter  or  one's  shoemaker,  on  those  missions 
which,  it  is  a  national  superstition  with  us,  may  be 
more  inexpensively  fulfilled  there  than  at  home.  The 
best  way  is  to  begin  by  giving  up  everything,  by  frankly 

229 


LONDON   FILMS 

saying  to  yourself  that  you  will  not  be  bothered,  that 
man's  days  of  travel  are  full  of  trouble,  and  that  you 
are  going  to  get  what  little  joy  you  can  out  of  them  as 
you  go  along.  Then,  perhaps,  on  some  errand  of  quite 
ignoble  purport,  you  will  be  seized  with  the  knowledge 
that  in  the  very  spot  where  you  stand  one  of  the  most 
significant  things  in  history  happened.  It  will  be  quite 
enough  for  you,  as  you  inhale  a  breath  of  the  London 
mixture  of  smoke,  dust,  and  fog,  that  it  is  something  like 
the  air  which  Shakespeare  and  Milton  breathed  when 
they  were  meditating  the  works  which  have  given  so 
many  international  after-dinner  orators  the  assurance 
of  a  bond  of  amity  in  our  common  language.  Once,  in 
driving  through  one  of  the  dullest  streets  imaginable, 
I  chanced  to  look  out  of  the  side-window  of  my  hansom, 
and  saw  on  a  flying  house-wall  a  tablet  reading :  "  Here 
lived  John  Dry  den,"  and  though  Dry  den  is  a  poet  to 
move  one  to  tenderness  as  little  as  may  be,  the  tears 
came  into  my  eyes. 

It  is  but  one  of  a  thousand  names,  great  in  some  sort 
or  other,  which  make  sojourn  in  London  impossible,  if 
one  takes  them  to  heart  as  an  obligation  to  consciousness 
of  her  constant  and  instant  claim.  They  show  you 
Johnson's  house  in  Bolt  Court,  but  it  only  avails  to  vex 
you  with  the  thought  of  the  many  and  many  houses  of 
better  and  greater  men  which  they  will  never  show  you. 
As  for  the  scenes  of  events  in  fiction  you  have  a  plain 
duty  to  shun  them,  for  in  a  city  where  the  great  facts 
of  the  past  are  written  so  deep  upon  the  walls  and 
pavement  one  over  another,  it  is  folly  which  can  be 
forgiven  only  to  the  vacancy  of  youth  to  go  looking  for 
the  places  where  this  imaginary  thing  happened.  Yet 
this  claim  of  folly  has  been  recognized,  and  if  you  wish 
to  indulge  it,  you  can  do  so  at  little  trouble.  Where 

230 


ASPECTS   AND   INTIMATIONS 

the  real  localities  are  not  available  they  have  fictitious 
ones,  and  they  show  you  an  Old  Curiosity  Shop,  for 
instance,  which  serves  every  purpose  of  having  been  the 
home  of  Little  Nell.  There  are  at  least  three  Cock 
Taverns,  and  several  Mitres,  all  genuine;  and  so  on. 
Forty  odd  years  ago  I  myself,  on  first  arriving  in  London, 
lodged  at  the  Golden  Cross,  because  it  was  there  that 
David  Copperfield  stopped;  and  I  was  insensately 
pleased  the  other  day  that  there  was  still  a  hotel  of  that 
name  at  the  old  stand.  Whether  it  was  the  old  inn,  I 
did  not  challenge  the  ghost  within  me  to  say.  I  doubt 
if  you  now  dine  there  "off  the  joint"  in  the  "coffee- 
room";  more  probably  you  have  a  table  d'hdte  meal 
served  you  "at  separate  tables,"  by  a  German  lad  just 
beginning  to  ignore  English.  The  shambling  elderly 
waiter  who  was  part  of  the  furniture  in  1861  is  very 
likely  dead;  and  for  the  credit  of  our  country  I  hope  that 
the  recreant  American  whom  I  heard  telling  an  English 
man  there  in  those  disheartening  days,  of  our  civic 
corruptions,  may  have  also  passed  away.  He  said  that 
he  himself  had  bought  votes,  as  many  as  he  wanted,  in 
the  city  of  Providence;  and  though  I  could  deny  the 
general  prevalence  of  such  venality  at  least  in  my  own 
stainless  state  of  Ohio,  I  did  not  think  to  suggest  that 
in  such  a  case  the  corruption  was  in  the  buyer  rather 
than  the  seller  of  the  votes,  and  that  if  he  had  now 
come  to  live,  as  he  implied,  in  a  purer  country,  he  had 
not  taken  the  right  way  to  be  worthy  of  it.  But  at 
twenty-four  you  cannot  think  of  everything  at  once, 
and  a  recreant  American  is  so  uncommon  that  you  need 
hardly,  at  any  age,  provide  for  him. 

x6 


XX 

PARTING   GUESTS 

HOWEVER  the  Golden  Cross  Inn  may  have  inwardly 
or  outwardly  changed,  the  Golden  Cross  Hotel 
keeps  its  old  place  hard  by  the  Charing  Cross  station, 
which  is  now  so  different  from  the  station  of  the  earlier 
day.  I  do  not  think  it  is  one  of  the  most  sympathetic 
of  the  London  stations.  I  myself  prefer  rather  the 
sentiment  of  the  good  old  Euston  station,  which  con 
tinues  for  you  the  feeling  of  arrival  in  England,  and  keeps 
you  in  the  glow  of  landing  that  you  have,  or  had  in  the 
days  when  you  always  landed  in  Liverpool,  and  the 
constant  Cunarders  and  Inmans  ignored  the  upstart  pre 
tensions  of  Southampton  and  Plymouth  to  be  ports  of 
entry  from  the  United  States.  But  among  the  stations 
of  minor  autobiographical  interest,  Charing  Cross  is  un 
doubtedly  the  first,  and  you  may  have  your  tenderness 
for  it  as  the  place  where  you  took  the  train  for  the  night- 
boat  at  Folkestone  in  first  crossing  to  the  continent. 
How  strange  it  all  was,  and  yet  how  not  unfriendly;  for 
there  is  always  a  great  deal  of  human  nature  in  England. 
She  is  very  motherly,  even  with  us  children  who  ran 
away  from  home,  and  only  come  back  now  and  then  to 
make  sure  that  we  are  glad  of  having  done  so.  In  the 
lamp-broken  obscurity  of  the  second-class  carriage  I 
am  aware  still  of  a  youthful  exile  being  asked  his  destina 
tion,  and  then  his  derivation,  by  a  gentle  old  lady  in  the 

232 


PARTING   GUESTS 

seat  opposite  (she  might  have  been  Mother  England  in 
person),  who,  hearing  that  he  was  from  America  where 
the  civil  war  was  then  very  unpromising,  could  only 
say,  comfortingly:  "And  very  glad  to  be  out  of  it,  / 
dare  say!"  He  must  protest,  but  if  he  failed  to  con 
vince,  how  could  he  explain  that  part  of  his  high  mission 
to  the  ports  of  the  Lombardo- Venetian  Kingdom  was 
to  sweep  from  the  Adriatic  the  Confederate  privateers 
which  Great  Britain  was  then  fitting  out  to  prey  upon 
our  sparse  commerce  there  ?  As  a  matter  of  fact  he  had 
eventually  to  do  little  or  no  sweeping  of  that  sort ;  for  no 
privateers  came  to  interrupt  the  calm  in  which  he  de 
voted  himself,  unofficially,  to  writing  a  book  about  the 
chief  of  those  ports. 

It  was  the  first  of  many  departures  from  London, 
where  you  are  always  more  or  less  arriving  or  departing 
as  long  as  you  remain  in  England.  It  is  indeed  an 
axiom  with  the  natives  that  if  you  want  to  go  from  any 
one  point  to  any  other  in  the  island  it  is  easier  to  come 
to  London  and  start  afresh  for  it,  than  to  reach  the  point 
across  country.  The  trains  to  and  from  the  capital  are 
swifter  and  more  frequent,  and  you  are  not  likely  to  lose 
your  way  in  the  mazes  of  Bradshaw  if  you  consult  the 
indefinitely  simplified  ABC  tables  which  instruct  you 
how  to  launch  yourself  direct  from  London  upon  any 
objective,  or  to  recoil  from  it.  My  impression  is  that 
you  habitually  drive  to  a  London  station  as  nearly  in 
time  to  take  your  train  as  may  be,  and  that  there  is  very 
little  use  for  waiting-rooms.  This  may  be  why  the 
waiting-room  seems  so  small  and  unattractive  a  part  of 
the  general  equipment.  It  never  bears  any  such  pro 
portion  to  the  rest  as  the  waiting-rooms  in  the  great 
Boston  stations,  or  even  that  of  the  Grand  Central  in 
New  York,  and  is  by  no  chance  so  really  fine  as  that  of 

233 


LONDON   FILMS 

the  Atchison  and  Topeka  at  Omaha,  or  that  of  the  Lake 
Shore  at  Pittsburg.  Neither  the  management  nor  the 
climate  is  so  unkind  as  to  keep  intending  passengers 
from  the  platforms,  where  they  stand  talking,  or  walk 
up  and  down,  or  lean  from  their  carriage-doors  and 
take  leave  of  attendant  friends  with  repeated  pathos. 
With  us  it  is  either  too  cold  or  too  hot  to  do  that,  and  at 
all  the  great  stations  we  are  now  fenced  off  from  the 
tracks,  as  on  the  Continent,  and  unless  we  can  make 
favor  with  the  gateman,  must  despatch  our  farewells 
before  our  parting  dear  ones  press  forward  to  have  their 
tickets  punched.  But  at  no  London  station,  and  far 
less  at  any  provincial  station  in  England,  are  you  sub 
jected  to  these  formalities;  and  the  English  seem  to 
linger  out  their  farewells  almost  abusively,  especially 
if  they  are  young  and  have  much  of  life  before  them. 

Charing  Cross  has  the  distinction,  sole  among  her 
sister  stations,  of  a  royal  entrance.  There  is  no  doubt 
a  reason  for  this;  but  as  royalty  is  always  coming  and 
going  in  every  direction,  it  is  not  easy  to  know  why  the 
other  stations  do  not  provide  themselves  with  like 
facilities.  One  cannot  imagine  just  how  the  king  and 
queen  get  in  and  out  of  the  common  gateway,  but  it 
has  to  be  managed  everywhere  but  at  Charing  Cross,  no 
matter  what  hardship  to  royalty  it  involves.  Neither 
has  any  other  station  a  modern  copy  of  a  Queen 
Eleanor's  Cross,  but  this  is  doubtless  because  no  other 
station  was  the  last  of  these  points  where  her  coffin  was 
set  down  on  its  way  from  Lincoln  to  its  final  resting- 
place  in  Westminster.  You  cannot  altogether  regret 
their  lack  after  you  have  seen  such  an  original  cross  as 
that  of  Northampton,  for  though  the  Victorian  piety 
which  replaced  the  monument  at  Charing  Cross  was 
faithful  and  earnest,  it  was  not  somehow  the  art  of 

234 


PARTING   GUESTS 

1291.  One  feels  no  greater  hardness  in  the  Parliamen 
tary  zeal  which  razed  the  cross  in  1647  than  in  the  stony 
fidelity  of  detail  which  hurts  the  eye  in  the  modern 
work,  and  refuses  to  be  softened  by  any  effect  of  the 
mellowing  London  air.  It  looks  out  over  the  scurry 
of  cabs,  the  ponderous  tread  of  omnibuses,  the  rain 
fall  patter  of  human  feet,  as  inexorably  latter-day  as 
anything  in  the  Strand.  It  is  only  an  instance  of  the 
constant  futility  of  the  restoration  which,  in  a  world  so 
violent  or  merely  wearing  as  ours,  must  still  go  on,  and 
give  us  dead  corpses  of  the  past  instead  of  living  images. 
Fortunately  it  cannot  take  from  Charing  Cross  its  pre 
eminence  among  the  London  railway  stations,  which  is 
chiefly  due  to  its  place  in  the  busy  heart  of  the  town, 
and  to  that  certain  openness  of  aspect,  which  some 
times,  as  with  the  space  at  Hyde  Park  Corner,  does  the 
effect  of  sunniness  in  London.  It  may  be  nearer  or 
farther,  as  related  to  one's  own  abode,  but  it  has  not 
the  positive  remoteness  from  the  great  centres,  by  force 
of  which,  for  instance,  Waterloo  seems  in  a  peripheral 
whirl  of  non-arrival,  and  Vauxhall  lost  somewhere  in 
a  rude  borderland,  and  King's  Cross  bewildered  in  a 
roar  of  tormented  streets  beyond  darkest  Bloomsbury. 
Even  Paddington,  which  is  of  a  politer  situation,  and  is 
the  gate  of  the  beautiful  West-of-England  country,  has 
not  the  allure  of  Charing  Cross;  even  Euston  which  so 
sweetly  prolongs  the  old-fashioned  Liverpool  voyage 
from  New  York,  and  keeps  one  to  the  last  moment  in  a 
sense  of  home,  really  stays  one  from  London  by  its 
kind  reluctance.  It  is  at  Charing  Cross  alone  that  you 
are  immediately  and  unmistakably  in  the  London  of 
your  dreams. 

I  think  that  sooner  or  later  we  had  arrived  at  or  de 
parted  from  all  the  great  stations,  but  I  will  not  make 

235 


LONDON   FILMS 

so  sure  of  St.  Pancras.  I  am  afraid  that  I  was,  more 
strictly  speaking,  only  at  a  small  church  hard  by,  of  so 
marked  a  ritualistic  temperament  that  it  had  pictures 
in  it,  and  gave  me  an  illusion  of  Italy,  though  I  was 
explicitly  there  because  of  an  American  origin  in  the 
baptism  of  Junius  Brutus  Booth.  I  am  sorry  I  do  not 
remember  the  name  of  that  little  church,  but  it  stood 
among  autumn  flowers,  in  the  heart  of  a  still,  sunny 
morning,  where  the  reader  will  easily  find  it.  Of  Vic 
toria  station  I  am  many  times  certain,  for  it  was  from 
it  that  we  at  last  left  London,  and  that  at  the  time  of 
an  earlier  sojourn  we  arrived  in  a  fog  of  a  type  which 
stamped  our  sense  of  the  world's  metropolis  with  a 
completeness  which  it  had  hitherto  disappointingly 
wanted. 

It  had  been  a  dull  evening  on  the  way  up  from  Dover, 
but  not  uncommonly  dull  for  an  evening  of  the  English 
November,  and  we  did  not  notice  that  we  had  emerged 
from  the  train  into  an  intensified  obscurity.  In  the 
corridors  of  the  station-hotel  hung  wreaths  of  what  a 
confident  spirit  of  our  party  declared  to  be  smoke,  in 
expression  of  the  alarming  conviction  that  the  house 
was  on  fire.  Nobody  but  ourselves  seemed  troubled 
by  the  smoke,  however,  and  with  a  prompt  recurrence 
to  the  reading  which  makes  the  American  an  intimate 
of  the  English  circumstance  though  he  has  never  per 
sonally  known  it,  we  realized  that  what  seemed  smoke 
must  be  a  very  marked  phase  of  London  fog.  It  did 
not  perceptibly  thicken  in-doors  that  night,  but  the 
next  day  no  day  dawned,  nor,  for  that  matter,  the  day 
after  the  next.  All  the  same  the  town  was  invisibly 
astir  everywhere  in  a  world  which  hesitated  at  moments 
between  total  and  partial  blindness.  The  usual  motives 
and  incentives  were  at  work  in  the  business  of  men, 

236 


PARTING   GUESTS 

more  like  the  mental  operations  of  sleep  than  of  waking. 
From  the  height  of  an  upper  window  one  could  look 
down  and  feel  the  city's  efforts  to  break  the  mesh  of  its 
weird  captivity,  with  an  invisible  stir  in  all  directions, 
as  of  groping.  Of  course,  life  had  to  go  on,  upon  such 
terms  as  it  could,  and  if  you  descended  from  your 
window  that  showed  nothing,  and  went  into  the  street, 
and  joined  the  groping,  you  could  make  out  something 
of  its  objects.  With  a  cabman  who  knew  his  way,  as  a 
pilot  knows  his  way  on  a  river  in  a  black  night,  you 
could  depart  and  even  arrive.  In  the  course  of  your 
journey  you  would  find  the  thoroughfare  thick  with 
hesitating  or  arrested  traffic.  At  one  place  you  would 
be  aware  of  a  dull,  red  light,  brightening  into  a  veiled 
glare,  and  you  would  have  come  upon  a  group  of  horses, 
detached  from  several  omnibuses,  and  standing  head  to 
head  till  they  might  hopefully  be  put  to  and  driven 
on  again.  The  same  light,  with  the  torches  carried  by 
boys,  would  reveal  trucks  and  carts  stopped,  or  slowly 
creeping  forward.  Cab-horses  between  the  blotches  of 
flame  made  by  the  cab-lamps  were  craning  their  necks 
forward,  or  twitching  them  from  side  to  side.  Through 
the  press  foot-passengers  found  their  way  across  the 
street,  and  imaginably  in  the  dark  that  swallowed  up 
the  sidewalks,  they  were  going  and  coming  on  errands 
that  could  brook  no  stay.  The  wonder  was  that  they 
could  know  which  way  they  were  going,  or  how  they 
could  expect  to  reach  any  given  point. 

Where  the  buildings  were  densest  the  fog  was  thinnest, 
and  there  it  was  a  greenish-yellow,  like  water  when  you 
open  your  eyes  and  look  at  it  far  below  the  surface. 
Where  the  houses  fell  away,  and  you  found  yourself  in 
a  square,  or  with  a  park  on  one  side,  the  vapor  thick 
ened  into  blackness  and  seemed  to  swell,  a  turbid  tide, 

237 


LONDON    FILMS 

overhead  and  underfoot.  It  hurt  your  straining  eyes, 
and  got  into  your  throat,  and  burned  it  like  a  sullen 
steam.  If  your  cab  stopped,  miraculously  enough,  at 
the  address  given,  you  got  out  incredulous  and  fearful 
of  abandonment.  When  you  emerged  again,  and  found 
your  cab  waiting,  you  mutely  mounted  to  your  place 
and  resumed  your  strange  quality  of  something  in  a 
dream. 

So,  all  that  day  the  pall  hung  upon  the  town,  and  all 
the  next.  The  third  day  the  travellers  were  to  sail 
from  Liverpool,  and  there  was  some  imperative  last- 
shopping  on  the  eve.  Two  of  them  took  a  courageous 
cab,  and  started  for  Bond  Street.  In  a  few  moments 
the  cab  was  in  the  thick  of  the  fog  and  its  consequences, 
a  tangle  of  stationary  vehicles  with  horses  detached, 
or  marking  time,  without  advancing  either  way.  A 
trembling  hand  lifted  the  little  trap  in  the  cab-roof, 
and  a  trembling  voice  asked  the  cabman:  "Do  you 
think  you  can  go  on?"  " I  think  so,  sir."  The  horse's 
head  had  already  vanished;  now  his  haunches  faded 
away.  Towards  the  dashboard  the  shafts  of  another 
cab  came  yawing,  and  again  the  eager  voice  quavered: 
"Do  you  think  you  can  get  back?"  "  Oh  yes,  sir,"  the 
answer  came  more  cheerfully,  and  the  shopping  was 
done  a  week  later  in  Twenty-third  Street. 

There  is  an  insensate  wish  in  the  human  witness  to 
have  nature  when  she  begins  misbehaving  do  her  worst. 
One  longs  to  have  her  go  all  lengths,  and  this  perhaps 
is  why  an  earthquake,  or  a  volcanic  eruption,  of  violent 
type  is  so  satisfactory  to  those  it  spares.  It  formed  the 
secret  joy  of  the  great  blizzard  of  1888,  and  it  must 
form  the  mystical  delight  of  such  a  London  fog  as  we 
had  experienced.  But  you  see  the  blizzard  once  in  a 
generation  or  a  century,  while  if  you  are  good,  or  good 

238 


PARTING   GUESTS 

enough  to  live  in  London,  you  may  see  a  charac 
teristic  fog  almost  any  year.  It  is  another  case  in 
which  the  metropolis  of  the  New  World  must  yield  to 
the  metropolis  of  the  whole  world.  Fog  for  fog,  I  do 
not  say  but  the  fog  in  which  we  left  New  York,  on 
March  3,  1904,  was  not  as  perfect  as  our  great  London 
fog.  But  the  New  York  fog  was  only  blindingly  white 
and  the  London  fog  blindingly  black,  and  that  is  a 
main  difference. 

The  tender  and  hesitating  mist  with  which  each  day 
of  our  final  September  in  London  began,  must  not  be 
confused  in  the  reader's  mind  with  a  true  London  fog. 
The  mist  grew  a  little  heavier,  day  by  day,  perhaps; 
but  only  once  the  sun  failed  to  burn  through  it  before 
noon,  and  that  was  one  of  the  first  days  of  October,  as 
if  in  September  it  had  not  yet  lost  the  last  of  its  summer 
force.  Even  then,  though  it  rained  all  the  forenoon, 
and  well  into  the  afternoon,  the  weather  cleared  for  a 
mild,  warm  sunset,  and  we  could  take  the  last  of  our 
pleasant  walks  from  Half-Moon  Street  into  St.  James's 
Park. 

When  the  last  day  of  our  London  sojourn  came,  it 
was  fitly  tearful,  and  we  had  our  misgivings  of  the 
Channel  crossing.  The  crossing  of  the  day  before  had 
been  so  bad  that  Pretty  Polly,  who  had  won  the  St. 
Leger,  held  all  England  in  approving  suspense,  while 
her  owners  decided  that  she  should  not  venture  to  the 
defeat  that  awaited  her  in  France,  till  the  sea  was 
smoother.  But  in  the  morning  the  papers  prophesied 
fair  weather,  and  it  was  promised  that  Pretty  Polly 
should  cross.  Her  courage  confirmed  our  own,  and 
we  took  our  initial  departure  in  the  London  fashion 
which  is  so  different  from  the  New  York  fashion.  Not 
with  the  struggle,  personally  and  telephonically,  in  an 

239 


LONDON   FILMS 

exchange  of  bitter  sarcasms  prolonged  with  the  haughty 
agents  of  the  express  monopoly,  did  we  get  our  bag 
gage  expensively  before  us  to  the  station  and  follow  in 
a  costly  coupe,  but  with  all  our  trunks  piled  upon  two 
reasonable  four-wheelers,  we  set  out  contemporane 
ously  with  them.  In  New  York  we  paid  six  dollars 
for  our  entire  transportation  to  the  steamer ;  in  London 
we  paid  six  shillings  to  reach  the  Victoria  station  with 
our  belongings.  The  right  fare  would  have  been  five; 
the  imagination  of  our  cabman  rose  to  three  and  six 
each,  and  feebly  fluttered  there,  but  sank  to  three,  and 
did  not  rise  again.  At  our  admirable  lodging  the  land 
lady,  the  butler  and  the  chambermaid  had  descended 
with  us  to  the  outer  door  in  a  smiling  convention  of 
regret,  the  kindly  Swiss  boots  allowed  the  street  porter 
to  help  him  up  with  our  trunks,  and  we  drove  away  in 
the  tradition  of  personal  acceptability  which  bathes 
the  stranger  in  a  gentle  self-satisfaction,  and  which 
prolonged  itself  through  all  the  formalities  of  registering 
our  baggage  for  the  continent  at  the  station,  of  bribing 
the  guard  in  the  hope  of  an  entire  first-class  compart 
ment  to  ourselves  and  then  sharing  it  with  four  others 
similarly  promised  its  sole  use,  and  of  telegraphing  to 
secure  seats  in  the  rapide  from  Calais  to  Paris. 

Then  we  were  off  in  a  fine  chill,  small  English  rain 
through  a  landscape  in  which  all  the  forms  showed  like 
figures  in  blotting-paper,  as  Taine  said,  once  for  all. 
After  we  had  run  out  of  the  wet  ranks  of  yellowish- 
black  city  houses,  and  passed  the  sullen  suburbs, 

"All  in  a  death-doing  autumn-dripping  gloom," 

we  found  ourselves  in  a  world  which  was  the  dim  ghost 
of  the  English  country  we  had  so  loved  in  the  summer. 
On  some  of  the  trees  and  hedgerows  the  leaves  hung 

240 


PARTING   GUESTS 

dull  yellow  or  dull  red,  but  on  most  they  were  a  blacken 
ing  green.  The  raw  green  of  the  cold  flat  meadows, 
the  purplish  green  of  the  interminable  ranks  of  cabbages, 
and  the  harsh  green  of  the  turnip-fields,  blurred  with  the 
reeking  yellow  of  mustard  bloom,  together  with  the 
gleaming  brown  of  ploughed  fields,  formed  a  prospect 
from  which  the  eye  turned  with  the  heart,  in  a  rapturous 
vision  of  the  South  towards  which  we  were  now  swiftly 
pulsing. 


THE  END 


THIS    BOOK    IS    DUE    ON    THE    LAST    DATE 
STAMPED   BELOW 


AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN  THIS  BOOK 
ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY  WILL  INCREASE  TO 
50  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH  DAY  AND  TO  $1.00  ON  THE 
SEVENTH  DAY  OVERDUE. 


Book  Slip-20m-3,'60(A9205s4)458 

HHHHHIH 


Howells,  W.D. 
London  films 


Call  Number: 

DA68U 
H6 


H6 


210057 


